Color , or lack thereof. Shape. Form. Each artist takes these elements and each will reach a different result.
The Monadnock Art/Friends of the Dublin Art Colony’s 21st Annual Open Studio Art Tour features 50 studios and more than 65 artists with a broad range of disciplines – painters and sculptors, jewelery makes and glass blowers, photographers and craftsmen and women.
“It’s really designed to get to know the artists in the studios and to let people meet them face-to-face in their environments and see where they work,” said Rick Hance, the former president of the board of directors to Monadnock Art/Friends of the Dublin Art Colony.
This is the largest tour ever, according to Hance. While the studio cap is at 50, there are multiple studios that are hosting guest artists.
“There are artists from New York or North Carolina, as well as some more local places, like Wilton,” said Hance.
Also, this is the first year that a select number of studios will be open for three days instead of two, based upon the popularity of the tour.
As tourists wind their way around the region, they may stop in to visit Sheila King of Dublin, who uses the ancient technique of tempera, which uses pigments grinded into a binding agent – in King’s case, egg yolk. King’s abstract paintings of geometric designs rely strictly on color and form to lead the eye about the work.
Or, they might visit the darkroom and studio of black and white photographers Linda Claff and David Rheubottom of Peterborough. The couple takes color out of the equation, instead relying on contrast and texture that the black and white brings out of their photographs, and the unique forms of their subjects to make their images come to life.
“Color is very important to me,” said King. “Tempera creates a very intense color feeling.”
While in the past, King has painted abstract expressionism and realism, in the last five years or so, she has settled upon her current style of abstract geometric forms.
“I work intuitively, whatever I feel like doing at the time,” said King. “There is almost a mathematical progression to what I do.”
King’s work can be an explosion of various shapes and colors on the canvas, or sometimes, she said, she self-imposes limits to see how far she can take a single idea. A series of three paintings she did, for example, only uses the triangle shape.
“At the time, it was a challenge to impose that limitation on what I was doing. I felt I was putting too many disparate shapes in one painting, and I decided to put that limitation on the process, and see how much variety I could get out of that idea. So I did three paintings that had almost the same linear composition, but they all came out completely different, because of the way I placed the colors or altered some of the shapes.”
Other times, said King, as she plans out a painting, she will limit her palette, using only four or five colors in her work.
Working in another medium, photographer Linda Claff also likes to get abstract, she said in a recent interview at the home and studio she shares with her husband, David Rhuebottom in Peterborough.
“I found that two or three years ago that my camera was just getting in closer and closer, and I became interested in the abstract,” said Claff. “Sometimes it causes consternation in the people who are looking at the photo. They ask, ‘What is that?’”
That interest in the abstract means that Claff often looks more at the forms, shapes and lines within a subject than the subject itself.
“You can take a photograph of an interesting thing, and not have it be an interesting photograph,” said Claff.
And sometimes, she added, she finds inspiration in unexpected places – such as the focus of her current series, spillways around the region, which was sparked by a single photograph she took one day while taking a picture of a spillway in Jaffrey.
“They are photographs of more than just waterfalls, or hopefully they are,” said Claff. “They are photographs of what happens when man tries to hold back water and water persists. It plummets and hits rocks and errodes them. There are shadows and moving water and abstractions that are beautiful. There are all kinds on interactions that takes place. It makes me want to see what more there is beyond just water moving over rocks.”
And, like her husband, Claff likes to work in black and white with traditional film, rather than digital.
“I can sometimes be seduced by color when I’m looking through the lens. I’m still learning to see the world in black and white,” said Claff, who only began photographing after she met Rheubottom, later in life. “But black and white simplifies. It helps me to isolate things. And I love the velvet blacks and the warm whites.”
And black and white captures the tone of the images taken by Claff’s husband, Rhuebottom, whose work often reflects isolated but beautiful scenery or shots of abandoned or broken architecture. Rhuebottom and Claff often visit the Southwest, where Rhuebottom fell in love with the starkness of the landscape.
“There are some things where color makes the image. There’s something about the color that transcends. But by and large, I’ve found that neutralizing the dimension of color brings out the texture, the gradient of tone. It’s a more subtle technique.”
And while Rhuebottom usually thinks of himself as a landscape or architectural photographer who usually captures lonely, almost minimalistic images, the spark of inspiration can come from anywhere, he said, and he is in the midst of a transition in his work inspired by a property he discovered full of various kinds of yard art that he’s gained permission to photograph over a period of time.
“The more I looked at things, the more there was to see,” said Rhuebottom. “There’s an eye for what’s been collected and put together. However concious the decision was, there’s obviously some artistic vision behind the arrangement. It shows that there’s a sublime in the ordinary. There’s something more going on here.”
The Open Studio Art Tour is self-directed, and it’s free for the interested public on Oct. 8 through Oct. 10 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.. The Tour travels through the towns surrounding the beloved Mount Monadnock: Chesham, Dublin, Hancock, Harrisville, Jaffrey, Marlborough, Peterborough, and Sharon. Many artists offer work for sale, often specially priced for the Tour. To preview some of the member artists work or to download a tour map, visit www.MonadnockArt.org.
Also running Columbus Day Weekend is the Fall Foliage Art Studio Tour, which includes artists from Antrim, New Ipswich, Rindge, Keene, Swanson, Munsonville, Stoddard and Nelson. For a map of that tour and more information about featured artists, visit www.fallfoliageartstudiotour.com.
On Saturday and Sunday, the Annual Wool Arts Tour will feature Spring Pond Farm in Greenfield, as well as Spinner Farm in Deering, Western View Farm in Hillsborough and The Fiber Studio in Henniker. Each farm will feature wool arts from multiple area farms. The wool tour is held on Saturday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. For directions and more information, visit www.woolartstournh.com.