NEWFANE-Even in troubled times, a fine artist and craftsperson will keep creating, exploring avenues of expression, and finding place and peace on the canvas or the potter's wheel.
So it is with the 11-member Rock River Artists (RRA), as the public can witness at the collective's 33rd annual Open Studio Tour this Saturday and Sunday, July 19 and 20, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. each day.
A tour that has earned its following well beyond southern Vermont, the annual event features accomplished artists and craftspeople in media from raku pottery to painting, from thread on fabric to printmaking.
New to the tour this year are Brittany Bills-Coleman, painting and pressed flowers; GR Studio (Gayle Robertson), painting; and Kimberly McCormack, linocut printmaking.
The eight other Rock River artists on this year's tour are Mucuy Bolles, Richard Foye, Georgie, Lily Lyons, Gianna Robinson, Deidre Scherer, Matthew Tell, and T. Breeze Verdant.
As the RRA matures and new members are welcomed, Foye wants to be sure credit for the tour goes to founding artists Roger Sandes, the late Mary Welsh, Chris Triebert, and Carol Ross.
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Bills-Coleman, whose semi-realistic paintings are acrylic on upcycled tea bags, explains that she presses dried flowers into her work to make geometric designs: "The teabags act as canvas, and the pressed flower remnants get turned into paper, to be painted on again."
She studied art with Stephanie Nyzio at Leland & Gray Union High School, then went on to study marine biology in college, taking whatever courses she could in wildlife.
"A lot of my work is nature based: a lot of butterflies, a lot of bugs," Bills-Coleman says.
Coworkers at the vet clinic where she works pass their empty tea bags on to her - "I don't drink tea," she says - and she uses not only the pouch material but residue, such as turmeric, from its contents.
For Bills-Coleman, who has been "making paper with old mail and stuff," adding that residue gives it "a neat little texture."
"I've been adding the pressed flowers into the homemade paper," she says. "And it's all kind of becoming more cohesive with a lot of natural elements, a lot of inspiration from wildlife and nature."
Having shown locally, Bills-Coleman, who is "trying to be more open to new things," says she is pleased to have been asked to join the Rock River Artists.
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McCormack creates prints in linocut, a variant of a woodcut, in which, she explains, "a sheet of linoleum is carved; ink is rolled on the block to check that the image is correct and carving is complete; then each print is individually inked, hand-pressed, and hung to dry."
"I've always done stuff with my hands," says McCormack, listing batik, lampworking, and carpentry.
"I find myself most present when I am printmaking," she says. "I truly love the learning process, discoveries from my mistakes, and the joy of a beautiful final piece. And I like the instant gratification of the ink."
Praising serendipity, she says that once a linocut is laid out, "I never know what it's going to look like. It can be frustrating, but when it works out, it's just fantastic.
"When I'm carving, especially, it's very meditative: when I just need to settle, I'm in that space where everything is just put aside for a moment," McCormack says.
Having had her work seen at area fairs, festivals, and markets, McCormack, also a speech language pathologist assistant, says that "being part of the Rock River Artists has been a huge goal for me." When asked to join, she was all in.
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In her bright, high-ceilinged Newfane studio, Gayle Robertson - GR Studio - plies her art, calling on a rich past of painting, sculpture, collage, and printmaking, as well as college and graduate training in art.
"I've been making art since I was a kid," she says. "I just keep making it. I just keep plugging away. And the older I get, the more I find I enjoy it - [it] balances me out."
As she works, Robertson is mindful of the need for honesty in expression, that "not all that presents itself is always beautiful." She wrestles with that and with honest interpretation of what she sees.
Robertson loves to mix color, she says, but notes that not all colors in front of us are inherently pretty. It's "the same with sculpture," she says, pointing to one of her own.
"Look at those saggy butts. But does that feel human to you? Can you feel that in your mind? You know, that's who we are, right? So it is that acceptance that creates truth. That's how we find [truth] - by being willing to spend a little time with what's actually in front of us."
Having shown in galleries region-wide over the years, she adds, "I realized that I just didn't like competing with other people in the gallery. I didn't think that that was how I wanted to feel about my work, so I just sort of kept it for myself."
During that interlude, she worked in graphic design and created some commercial art for books and some digital art, as well as some computer games.
Eventually Robertson earned a master's degree in spiritual direction, companioning people on their spiritual journey. She's worked in chaplaincy roles, most recently in palliative and end-of-life care.
Last September, Robertson had a show at Newfane's Crowell Gallery.
"It was kind of a retrospective. I had paintings from the '80s all through every year of my life," she said - and she was gratified that artist friends of hers scooped them up.
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Bolles' studio, built by her husband, Chris Makay, is in Marlboro, just over the South Newfane town line. Filled with clay objects in various stages of completion, paintings of significance adorn the walls, as do oversized posters - one of Bolles performing with Lar Lubovitch Dance Company, another of her dancing with the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.
Bolles is a lesson in metamorphosis. Her work is a fusion of influences; in fact, Mestizo, her studio's name, means a person of mixed blood, half indigenous and half white, "which is what I am," she says.
Born in the Mayan village of Komchen, Mexico, her pieces use "a mix of indigenous and Western techniques" and even some innovations on Mayan craft.
In textured surfaces - sometimes ornamented with feathers or hieroglyphics and always colored with rich glazes - she designs and produces a range of work from whistling bottles to vases to pure sculpture.
This is her fourth year with the Rock River Artists and her second welcoming visitors to her studio. Bolles also shows at Paradise City Arts Festival in Northampton, Massachusetts, and at the League of New Hampshire Craftsmen's Fair at Mount Sunapee. Last year, she was invited as a BIPOC fellow to join the Asparagus Valley Pottery Trail in western Massachusetts.
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Richard Foye has been with the RRA since the group's formation in 1993. A raku potter with a wide following, he urged studio tour visitors to check out newer and younger members of the group when interviewed in June by Peter "Fish" Case on Vermontitude.
But his work is so worth taking in. In his weathered cluster of Auger Hole Road structures, Foye has been working on developing new glazes and on producing even more of his exquisite vases, urns, and the like, many of which seem to plumb antiquity's depths.
This year Foye, an avid 70-something hockey player, says he "didn't do much [in the winter] because there was such good ice skating." He still shows and exhibits at Sunapee, but no longer at the Stowe Crafts Festival, which has been put on hold after 56 years.
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Georgie has been sharing her work through the Rock River Artists for 15 years and she still is "just mostly painting barns - barns and bridges," she says.
A plein air painter working in oils, she creates scenes in bold colors and playful shapes. There's a joyful innocence to her sophisticated work.
"Every time I get into a car and I'm not driving, I'm constantly looking for things to paint. But it has to stay in my mind for about six months. If it eats at me, then I go and paint it," she says.
"I saw an ad about four months ago about an exhibit they're doing over in Rhode Island with a giraffe that's part of a merry-go-round," Georgie continues. "And so, if it ever stops raining, blowing, and too hot or too cold, I'm going to go over and paint the giraffe."
Her work is seen annually in a Vermont Welcome Center show and through RRA. A member of the Quabbin Art Association, she exhibits there, too.
It's through RRA, though, that she sells the most. "And I like Rock River because people come from all over the United States [from Europe and even Japan]," she says.
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Lily Lyons has a studio overlooking one of the prettiest spots in Newfane. There, next to a crisp-looking cape she shares with her fiancé, the upper level of a gambrel roof garage is where she works in both painting and glass. Coming by it honestly, her mother Jen Morier, is an accomplished potter, and her brother, Sam, is a renowned Colorado-based blown glass artist.
In the past year, Lyons reports, "I've been learning, reading, studying, supporting other artists, and trying to prevent burnout by doing other things."
Lyons was recently featured in a juried show, "Energy and Stillness," at the Southern Vermont Arts Center (SVAC) in Manchester, in which she won an award for abstracted stillness. "That was really exciting," she said. The first time she's submitted to a juried show, she says, "it went really, really well, so I'm encouraged to do more of that and seek new avenues" including a craft show at SVAC in October.
Lyons was an influence on Bills-Coleman and McCormack joining this year. Their being in Newfane "seemed like a perfect fit," she says.
Of the RRA membership, she adds, "the bar has always been, you needed your own studio to participate. But one of the things we discussed this year as a group was, How do we help new artists?
"It's a real privilege to have your own studio. And we didn't all have one starting out. So how do we welcome and support these artists and help get them to a place where they can get their own studio in this town where we're trying to help art survive and thrive [and enrich community]?" she said.
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Gianna Robinson, whose paintings capture rural landscapes with their covered bridges and antique structures, as well as still life and even the human figure, admits she's "had a rather tough creative block for the past year."
She went down "a deep path of self discovery through writing and utilizing therapeutic art techniques to try to bust out of it," she said.
"A few months ago, I attempted something I've always been opposed to, maybe even wary of: abstract painting," Robinson says, reporting that she has "more than 20 works at different levels toward completion."
"They give me joy, hope, excitement, and freshness - something that I have lacked within for years," she says. "I love my representational landscapes and look forward to this new practice informing their energy."
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In a cheerful, bright studio, surrounded by stacks of neatly folded squares of calicoes and other prints collected over the years, thread-on-fabric artist Deidre Scherer points to various clusters of her work - some are still lifes, others are portraits of individuals and small groupings. At once they are poignant, beautiful, evocative, compassionate. Some are destined for a show in Indiana and one piece will head to New York City's Heller Museum for a show called "Proverbs, Adages, and Maxims."
She's tagged others, too, to hang in the RRA studio tour's welcome show to be hung at Olallie Daylily Farm Gallery. Her pieces have traveled throughout the U.S.; some of them have gone farther, to Montreal and even Japan. And she just sent a piece to the museum of Rhode Island School of Design, her alma mater.
Scherer's work, framed by her husband Steve Levine - "I mean, you cannot find a better frame maker"- is represented by Brattleboro's Mitchell-Giddings Fine Arts. She sells online, too, and when she has news of upcoming exhibits, she'll send an e-newsletter to a list of some 1,500.
She's invited to some museum shows and applies for a spot in others. Earlier this year, she was accepted as a featured artist in Fiber Art Now magazine.
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Matt Tell's studio, nestled into the Marlboro woods off North Pond Road, is welcoming and busy - full of work surfaces, many shelves of pots in progress, posters on the wall, and a lively buzz.
Downstairs, an assistant works in the back of the studio while Tell shows the latest glazes he's been working on; upstairs, his display loft features pitchers, plates, mugs, baskets.
Some are fluted, others carefully curved, all in glazes that manifest Tell's affinity with nature: rich earth tones, deep woods colors, and sky-like blues. Some have a new look for Tell - plates with an almost-oxidized copper-looking patina.
"I fire them on their side. And then the wood just piles up there," says Tell, who sees a universe in each matte surface.
As he shows his massive homemade kiln, Tell says he's been working more on "wood firing, the direction I want to go in instead of production gas firing."
Having been a mentor to many, including Bolles, Tell has taught widely and currently offers in-studio workshops. An annual presence at Sunapee and through the Vermont Crafts Council open studio weekends, he says the bulk of his sales are increasingly out of the studio.
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Of his work in inlay jewelry - with provenance - T. Breeze Verdant continues "to dig deeper in my search for creative materials to work with."
"My latest is aluminum cans scavenged from local road ditches. My jewelry has been worn by a woman giving an address at the U.N.," he says. "I love the thought that someone throws a beer can out the window not realizing it would end up around someone's neck at the United Nations."
Being among the Rock River Artists, Verdant puns as he observes it "is not a watershed group that has changed the course of my professional career, but it does connect me to a lovely group of creative people who share a common vision."
"Being able to make my living from home [in Williamsville] in such a gorgeous place and to join hands with such like-minded people is a privilege," he says.
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Visitors are encouraged to pick up a map and start their RRA tour at the Olallie Gallery at Olallie Daylily Garden, 129 Auger Hole Rd., South Newfane, where samples of each artist's work can be viewed.From there, one begins a self-guided tour of studios, all within a short drive. This year, three of the Rock River artists - Georgie, Bills-Coleman, and McCormack - will have their work on display at the historic South Newfane Schoolhouse, 390 Dover Rd.
For more information on this free event and for photos of artists' work, visit rockriverartists.com.
Annie Landenberger is an arts writer and columnist for The Commons. She also is one half of the musical duo Bard Owl, with partner T. Breeze Verdant, who - full disclosure - is one of the participating members of Rock River Artists.
This Arts column by Annie Landenberger was written for The Commons.