Inspired by Nature and Art

At this time of year there seems to be a lot of artist studio tours.  I usually manage to get to see  some new art while this opportunity is presenting itself.

Merrickville has an an artist studio tour the last weekend of September and the first weekend of October. The tours in Prince Edward County and  in Cornwall happen at the same time as the Merrickville one. I've been to the tour in Prince Edward County twice, and this year I finally made it to the Arts and Apples tour in Cornwall.

Merrickville becomes a very busy place during their tour, which is why they extended it to a two week event. The studios in the Cornwall area, by comparison, seemed almost deserted. Yet the artists were thrilled to have had as many as 75 people stop by. We only got to a few Cornwall area studios this year but found the artists there very friendly, and more than willing to explain their work. I will definitely go back another year, starting perhaps at the opposite end of the tour, so that we are more in the country. One of the things I love about such tours is exploring the back roads and seeing new sites.

I did, of course, check out at least 13 of the Merrickville artists on their final day, even without leaving town. It's always fun to see what the people I know have been up to, and how far they have come with their art over the past year.

Over the Thanksgiving weekend we went to one of my favorite tours, up in the hills beyond Perth. I've told you about this before, in 2013 and 2014. It's such a beautiful time of year to drive those roads, art, or no art. There is even an area called the Field Work Project, where artists do installations in the wild.  We made a point to stop by and see the Eyebox, which is actually a Camera Obscura created by Franc van Oort.  When you step inside, and close the door, the light coming though the lens in one of the walls of the box projects an upside down image of what it's facing on the opposite wall. You are, in effect, inside a giant camera. The whole thing is on a turn table and you are able to crank it in a complete circle and see the view from any angle.  I heard it might actually be moved to one of the locks near Burritts Rapids next year, if all goes according to plan. I do hope it does as I'd like to experience it again, and perhaps take my grandsons to give them some idea of just how a camera works.

Artist studio tours inspire me to try new things. I used to just look and see what I liked, but now I try to figure out how some things were done, and then go home and see if I can come up with that sort of effect. After the past couple of weeks, and several tours, I think I have enough ideas to keep me busy until springtime.

Thanksgiving Pilgrimage

I like to spend Thanksgiving by celebrating Mother Nature's last hoorah, wandering around some forest trail, looking at the pretty leaves. I didn't think I was going to get to do that this year, but we did go off towards Mayberly to check out part of the Perth Autumn Studio Tour. We only had time to do a few studios this year as we were due at a dinner later in the afternoon.

 We could have done some of the studios closer to Perth, but opted to go to the far end of the tour, so that we could, once again, visit Fieldworks, an art installation we found when we did this tour last year.

All three of the studios we visited were actually barns with several artists represented in each one.  There was glass work, and pottery, woodwork and weaving,  and purses and even garden elements, as well as the usual paintings.

Though no one mentioned The Fieldwork Project this year, it was indicated on the map, and we remembered it from last year, so we stopped by to see what was new there.  Not too much has changed, and some of the older stuff is getting a bit bedraggled, but the area is still fun to wander around, and we did find a few new things.

 The first new thing we spotted was this jumble of plastic tile drainage pipe. It's called the Knot, and is meant to represent the tangle of inter connectivity that is so prevalent in our world today.

While the knot is rather an ugly thing to see in the wilderness, a Mayfly seemed to fit right in.

 This giant bird, perched on some suitcases was here last year, and seems to have stood up well to the weather.

The biggest surprise, was finding this stack of books in the woods. It's called "Speaking Volumes - In Memory of a Book" It makes me a bit sad to know that 1500 books are being sacrificed to the elements.  The idea is that they will slowly return to their source as they disintegrate and fade away.

This was the most colourful of the displays, and just like the autumn leaves, they deserve one last look, before they are gone .......



I hope you all had a very Happy Thanksgiving.

Mother Nature Paints Too

Thanksgiving weekend has traditionally been the time for our last walk in the woods. The weather is often good, and the tree colours are lovely.  This year I didn't think it was going to happen, but it did.

I don't often have family here for Thanksgiving, but this year seemed to be the time. We scheduled the meal for Sunday, and decided to take in one of the art studio tours on Saturday.  There were three available to choose from.  One was in the Westport area, one in the Almonte area, and the third in the Perth area.  We decided to do the Perth Autumn Studio Tour as it was the only one of these we had not done before.  It took us up highway 7 as far as Maberly, and then down some back roads.  That's when the colour started to get better, and the terrain more interesting too. Some of those roads had major hills and curves.  Hubby commented that he thought the snowplow driver would have fun back there!

While most of the studio tours we go on take us to the artist's homes, this one took us, more often than not, to their barns. There were often four or five artists displaying their work at each stop, which mean there was not as many stops. That also likely meant less running around in the back country.  There was quite an assortment of different kinds of art, as well as the usual painters.  Dunn Sohn works with wood, and creates not only interesting shaped cutting boards, but also turned and sculpted pieces as well. My hubby was quite taken with his rocking chairs. They certainly had some nice lines.  Scott Dobson created fascinating Garden Elements out of anything from old fence posts to shutters, or a combination of the two.  John  Schweighardt is a stone carver.  He not only creates stone statues for outdoors, but also the most beautiful bowls and sinks you are going to find anywhere.  There were a number of potters, print makers and woodworkers, a weaver, a jeweler and a canoe maker as well as the usual painters.  Of the painters, I was especially taken with Wayne Williams, who not only uses both watercolour and acrylics, but also incorporates a bit of collage here and there, just to make things interesting. I intend to incorporate some of his methods into some of my future artistic attempts.  I already have a subject in mind to try it on.


Of course, while out hunting down art on back roads, we had also loaded some geocaches onto our GPS to find along the way.  I was sure that one in particular was going to be right at one of studios on the list, but when we got there, it was still .2 miles down the road.  Apparently a place known as Fieldworks was discovered by some other geocacher during a previous studio tour, and he decided it would be a great place to hide a cache.  When we got to the studio where I thought it was going to be, we were talking to one of the artists, who asked us if we had been to Fieldworks yet. When I told her we were planning to go there, as we were geocaching, she said the guy who had placed that cache had just gone out the door. It was too bad we missed him by such a short period of time.  What we did spot while talking to Susie Osler though, was a strange old stove.  I stooped to take a picture of it, and she said she thinks I'm the first woman ever to do that.  I mentioned that I like to blog my adventures and show unusual things found along the way.  If you have ever seen another one like this stove, do tell me about it.

So, off we went to Fieldworks, not really knowing what it was, but really just looking for the cache.  Well, hey, this is when I actually got to do my annual walk in the woods after all.  At this site, which is both a large field and some woodland, artists come and erect "artistic installations", for lack of any other way of describing them.  There are weird and wonderful things scattered throughout the site.  Just go for a walk and see what you can find.  Not all of it will make sense, but there are some very inventive minds at work here.  The displays are changed or added to seasonally, so there will always be something new to discover, and I'm sure we will find the time to go back and explore the site again and again.

While we saw lots of art created by people, Mother Nature had definitely been out with her own paint brush as well. That's what always makes Thanksgiving weekend special to me.