We’ve tried to cover The Beach Studio Tour several times at Local but the timing of our issues has always been a little off the timing of the Tour. This time was still not perfect but the issue hit the street just in advance of the Tour. For those who missed the Fall Tour, there is another every Spring and the artists who participate are operating all year round. So we encourage you to visit the Beach Studio Tour site and to visit the sites of the artists we covered and those we didn’t. We’re sure you’ll find some works you enjoy.
Home is Where the Art is
STORY: STEPHANIE STEARN
PHOTOS: JANICE HARDACRE, BEACH STUDIO TOUR
THIS OCTOBER 19TH, 20TH AND 21TH, THE PUBLIC WILL BE WELCOMED INTO THE HOMES AND STUDIOS OF TWENTY FIVE ARTISTS IN THE BEACH AREA.
The Beach Studio Tour ( www.beachstudiotour.ca ) occurs twice a year, once in the spring and once in the fall, and has done so since 1994. This free, self-guided tour is a rare opportunity to meet some incredibly warm and generous creative people. The chance to speak with these artists about their work and to see where it is made is an intimate look into the world of the working artists among us.
This is not, as Nathalie Vachon points out, the same as going to a gallery “where you don’t have the chance to speak with the person about where the piece came from, how it was created”. No, this is getting much closer than that.
After speaking with a few of the artists involved in this year’s Fall tour (only a tiny selection of the many artists who have participated throughout the years), I wished I’d had the time and space to interview them all. That may be someone else’s book for another time. Suffice it to say that these four, a diverse and interesting group, will have to represent their large and broad tribe of local creatives.
Nathalie Vachon www.nathalievachon.com is a painter, a storyteller, a writer and a teacher, as well as the recent Chair of the Beach Studio Tour. “I’ve been on the tour for eight years,” she tells me over green tea. ”It’s been a fantastic experience. It’s a great way to get to be known. I love it!” Serious enthusiasm. Her many layered paintings are ‘intuitive and abstract”, she says they remind her of dreams. She is a firm believer that art “should be inviting, warm and not intimidating.” What better place for that than the homes and studios of the people who create it. Nathalie sees the tour as having “a village atmosphere. You know, almost like a treasure hunt. You get your map, but you’re never exactly sure what you will find.” I ask her how she feels about inviting the public into her private space, thinking there might be some apprehension there, but she says she has none. “It’s such a great way to meet people who are interested in art. They are always gracious and respectful, and I’ve never had a bad experience.”
She tells me one of her favourite experiences with the tour. “A woman came back three times, considering a painting. On the third time, the painting had sold and she looked mortified. I suggested she see if there was anything else she would like. As she decided on another one, a lady managed to reach out and pick it up before she did! So we decided that I’d do a commissioned piece for her. After she’d picked up the painting, she sent me the most touching email about what this had meant for her. Painting really can transcend words and touch people on the level of the soul.”
Being the Chair of the BST must be a lot of work I say, but Nathalie defers to the collective. “They are such a wonderful, warm, heart-full group. So generous with their support of each other and the tour.”
Paula Childs www.childsclay.com is a ceramic artist who creates beautiful and functional art in her basement studio. She offers me delicious coffee in one of her gorgeous handmade mugs. A walk through her work space, which is open to the public during the tour, is at once mysterious and fascinating. The large, modern kiln is a sight to be seen. “This is the greenware, this is the bisque. Do you know much about the process?” I tell her that the last time I touched clay was in high school. I cringe remembering how hard it was to throw clay on the wheel and have it come out as something you intended. To make lovely things as Paula does is an enviable skill, one I do not possess. Her pieces are made in both porcelain and stoneware. “People think of porcelain as delicate, but it can go in the oven, the microwave, the dishwasher…they’ve been fired at such a high heat there is no fear of damage.” Paula has had at least one annual show and sale since the 70’s, so it was a natural fit for her to join the tour. A longtime Beach resident, she has walked the BST since it began. “It’s so much nicer than wholesaling for a shop. Someone might say ‘I’ll take ten of these’ for a store, as opposed to a person who is interested in the process and falls in love with one piece and really appreciates it.”
She describes her work as “inspired by the environment around me”, whether that be her lush garden, the wilds of nature, or the way the light falls on a building. “I really enjoy being part of a co-operative. I can’t tell you one experience that stands out as ‘best’. I just like meeting and talking with people who are interested in what you are doing.”
“When I was sixteen, I would haunt all of the photography stores in the city of Hamilton.” That’s how John Dowding www.johndowding.com describes his awakening to a life-long pursuit of the photographic image. He is a man who has been around. Literally. Images from Japan, Cuba, Italy, northern Ontario…the Beach. His numerable skills with the camera have taken him from pinhole to digital, from dream-like black and white to saturated full colour. John started showing his personal work around 1986. “When I retired from teaching I decided I would now have enough time to do shows. I lived close to Barrie, so I started doing the summer shows there.” John’s love of his subjects shows through in the pictures as well as in conversation with him – he is completely connected to the things he captures.
John has seen the astounding change in photography from film to digital. “Digital cameras have changed the world of photographers,” he says. “Now sometimes when people come they think, ‘Oh I can do that.’ We talk about how easy access to making photographs doesn’t necessarily create art.
The glut of product can never compete with a person with the focus and depth of an artist’s eye. But it’s not all bad. “The one good thing about digital is that it allows correction on the computer that would take an enormous amount of time in a photo lab.” Everything is changing so rapidly, but you may find John taking pictures with an 1894 camera with 120 film, or just as happily using his digital camera.
He loves the BST collective. “They are a wonderfully varied group of artists with many skills,” he says. “It’s very stimulating to be in a community of creative people, especially since we don’t live in a terribly creative world.” he says with a smile.
A founding member of the tour, Lucille Crighton www.lucillecrighton.com is a spectacularly skilled weaver and designer, who happens to live in my favourite house in the Beach. She invites John and I into her dining room for espresso, to complete my interviews for this article. John tells me her house was built by her grandfather with bricks salvaged from the great fire of 1904. I suddenly feel like a Beach infant, as I’ve only lived here for four years.
Samples of Lucille’s work hang in the dining room, the fabric strikingly alive with colour, the clothing promising original style. “I started weaving when I was a teenager,” says Lucille. “I bought my first loom with the money my grandfather left for my education,” she laughs. “I was knitting by the time I was six, crocheting by eight. I remember being down at the CNE and seeing spinning and weaving. That was what made me want a loom.”
Lucille shows me her current looms and her work space on the second floor of her house. She opens these rooms to the public on the tour. They are awe inspiring; the amount of work, skill and time it takes to create handmade fabric is incredible. There is a room containing all the yarns and wools, fabulously tidy and colour co-ordinated, a room full of vibrant colour. “There isn’t a colour I don’t like.” she says smiling.
From this experience I would say that if it’s at all possible, get out to the Beach Studio Tour this October. I doubt there will be an artist among them that you won’t enjoy. For a more in-depth look at what these artists create, please go their websites, referred to in this article, or visit www.beachstudiotour.ca for more information.