Goats assist painters at Steele’s Brushes event
CENTER TWP — For a few hours Sunday afternoon, June 11, Steele’s Brushes and Ceramics became the biggest petting zoo in town. More than a dozen baby goats were brought to the studio for Steele’s Painting with Goats event.
The baby goats, which are of the Nigerian dwarf variety, were supplied by local farmer Joyce McDonald, who owns Little Goat Town breeding farm in Clay Township.
“They’re just hanging out while the customers are getting to paint and have fun,” said Christine Steele, owner of Steele’s. “It’s not every day you get to pet and hold a goat while you paint.”
Children of all ages spent their time painting blank “bisqueware” ceramics in various shapes, such as gnomes and planters, with glaze paint. Once finished, the painted ceramics were put aside to be placed into a kiln, which will be fired up to 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit. The heat crystallizes and dries the glaze paint.
“It turns into a glassy kind of substance, and it looks really cool,” Steele said. “So they can take it home and keep it forever. It’s really neat because glaze has the same components of crushed-up glass, so once we put it in a kiln at a high temperature, that’s when it becomes something cool.”
There were two sessions of painting with baby goats: one from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. and another from 2:30 to 4:20 p.m.
Painting with Goats has been a recurring event at Steele’s since its founding in 2019. The original location was within Clearview Mall before it moved just a few blocks north to its current location on North Main Street in 2021.
Steele’s holds many other events at its studio, including Cricut and Bob Ross painting classes, as well as murder mysteries and summer camps.
