The 29th Monadnock Art Tour will kick off Saturday, Oct. 4, with an opening exhibition and reception from 4 to 7 p.m at Bass Hall in the Monadnock Center for History and Culture in Peterborough.
“We encourage everyone to stop by the exhibit and come to the reception; it is a chance for people to see examples of all the art on the tour, and most of the artists will be there as well,” said Rose Lowry, chief organizer of this year’s tour.
The free, self-driving tour runs Saturday, Oct. 11, through Sunday, Oct. 13. Details are available at monadnockart.org.
This year’s event features 81 artists in 65 studios across Dublin, Harrisville, Marlborough, Peterborough, Jaffrey and Hancock. Work on display includes painting, weaving, ceramics, fiber, glass, wood, sculpture, photography, collage, jewelry, illustration, furniture and mixed media.
“I really think artists represent some of the best of humanity,” Lowry said. “It’s creativity; it’s expression, it’s the things that makes us human, and that is something we really need more of right now.”
Lowry said it is a challenging time in the art market, with older generations downsizing, and younger people lacking the space or the funds to invest in art.
“What we are seeing is that a lot of artists are creating smaller works, such as jewelry or little table-top pieces of art; artists are adapting to the market. They are trying to do what they can to get people interested as they come through, to turn them on to art,” Lowry said.
Lowry said publicizing the tour is challenging because with 81 artists in 65 studios, “we never want to highlight one artist over another.”
“It is hard, because we can’t have 65 photos in every piece of publicity,” she said. “We have a full range of artists, from people who are very well known, the point where people come seek them out, to people who don’t do a lot of their own publicity, but are just out there in their studios, making their wonderful art. We hope everyone will try to see as many studios as they can.”
Lowry said creating the map of the tour is another challenge.
The driving route begins in Dublin, where the tour originated, and winds through Harrisville, Marlborough and Jaffrey, with 26 studios in Peterborough before concluding in Hancock.
“When I make the map, I start in Dublin, because that is where the tour started, with number 1, and then I have to figure out how to work everybody in, and every year it is a little different,” Lowry said. “Some of the locations are challenging to fit into the route, but each year we figure it out somehow.”
Lowry says she puts a huge amount of thought into the driving route.
“The path obviously hits all the studios, but I also spend a lot of time driving around to find scenic views, and I plan the route to take advantage of that so people can also experience the views and scenery as part of the tour,” Lowry said. “Especially for out-of-town visitors, they find it to be pretty amazing.”
Lowry says several of the studios themselves also have spectacular views.
“It’s not just driving there; when people arrive at some of these studios, it is such a treat and they are just amazed,” Lowry said. “So many of the studios are in such beautiful settings, some have Monadnock views, some have water views — they are all surprises for people to find.”
The Monadnock Art Tour, organized by the Friends of the Dublin Art Colony, includes artists in every town surrounding Dublin, as well as Sharon, although no Sharon artists signed up this year.
“We have to have some kind of limits on the tour, so we keep it to 65 studios. If it gets much bigger, that is just more artists than our board can support, and we can’t bring in enough people to visit more than that,” Lowry said. “Our mission is very simple: to support the artists in our small area.”
Lowry said seeing artists in their working studios is a rare treat.
“Even if you were to go meet an artist at a gallery talk, it’s a little different,” she said. “What artists care about most is educating people about their art; most of them care more about that than actually selling their art. They all love talking about the process of creating their art, and they love encouraging other makers of art, and people who appreciate art.”
Some studios will have art projects for young visitors, but not all studios are appropriate for children.
“Some of the studios are not great for children because obviously they might have sharp tools or glass pieces or a kiln, so parents just need to be aware of that,” Lowry said. “Some artists will do demonstrations of how they work, and seeing their space and work is just incredibly fascinating.”
Lowry says visitors to the Art Tour come from “all over the country and from all over the world.”
“The first few years, we started keeping track of where people came from, and they just come from all over–from England, from Australia. They come here for the foliage, but then they kind of stumble across the Art Tour, and now a lot of those people come back every year. They have their favorite artists, they are excited for new artists as well,” she said.
Lowry says that while her committee has researched art tours to find out how other groups present and organize their own art tours, they have not found another art tour exactly like the Monadnock Art Tour.
“We are actually pretty big–there are not a lot of tours this big, as far as we have been able to find out,” Lowry said. “Most of the art tours out there with this many artists take place over multiple weekends, where we are just one. A lot of them also take place all in one mill or something like that, while we are spread over the region. So we are pretty unique.”
