Vermont Open Studios 2019, Part 2

Meet the Artists

We visited the studios of about 13 artists during Fall Vermont Open Studios Tour weekend. We met artists who crafted using a large variety of media, including potters, wood workers, painters and a digital artist who combined computer art with oil, markers and other media. Below is a list of the artists we visited, grouped by type of art. I have included addresses, phone numbers and websites in case you have any interest in visiting their studios or purchasing their products.  Meet some of the amazing artists we encountered!

 
POTTERY/CERAMICS
 
 
Diane Echlin
Diane favored blues and greens that she created for her pottery, and attached decals from a US artist to some of her pieces.
428 S. Wardsboro Rd
Newfane 05345
(802) 365-7874
 

 
 
 
 
Walter Slowinski
Walter’s specialty was teapots and vessels, and he often attached found pieces of wood and even beads to his one-of-a-kind pieces.
658 Orchard St
Brattleboro 05301
(802) 257-1030

 

 
Maya Zelkin
Maya worked out of an unheated barn off the grid to create pottery for the home in earth tones.
116 Coldham Rd
Shrewsbury VT 05738
(802) 492-2045

 
Naomi Lindenfeld
Naomi crafted unique jewelry and pottery for the home using swirling layers of colored clay.
330 Meadowbrook Rd
Brattleboro VT 05301
(802) 258-6475

 
David Stone
David created simple, affordable, useful pieces for the home, including coffee mugs, soap dishes, sponge holders, and bright orange ceramic jack-o-lanterns.
1735 VT Rte 103
Cuttingsville 05738
(802) 492-2301

 
 
 

WOOD

 
Rich DeTrano
Rich’s turned bowls and vessels, often accented with sticks, were the highest quality we saw. His dragons were amazing, but alas, not for sale.
488 Andover Rd
Ludlow VT 05149
(802) 228-8894

 
Gerry Martin
Gerry handcrafted spectacular bowls while celebrating the natural imperfections of wood, often leaving live edges.
998 Lincoln Hill Rd
Shrewsbury 05738
(802) 492-2244

Gerry with his optician’s stand-turned-tool holder
 
Gene Felder
Gene Felder use a noisy lathe to turn his wood, preferring instead to create artistic bowls with hand tools.
149 Adams Rd
Shrewsbury VT 05738
802-558-9068

 

GLASS

 
Zachary Grace
Under the watchful eye of his caged parrot, Zac created copper and glass pieces using a hand-made furnace.
446 Williams ST
Brattleboro 05301
(802) 251-0402

 
Contemporary craft gallery and open studio experience featuring live glass blowing by Randi Solin and the open ceramic studios of Natalie Blake. Randi demonstrated how to create maple leaves out of hot glass.

(This wasn’t part of the Open Studios Vermont circuit, but we dropped in and got a wonderful glass demonstration.)

 

METAL ART

 

Stragnell Art

R Sanford Stragnell
 
Sanford, a former electrician, used castoff tools and electrical parts to create metal sculptures of animals and nature.
PO Box 394
Castleton 05735
(802) 468-2327

 
 
 

 Vermont Rocks, Original Sports Sculpture

John Davis
John, a triathlete, created unique pieces comprised of native rocks and stainless steel figures of athletes, including rock climbers, runners and fishermen.
442 S. Wardsboro Rd.
Newfane VT 05345
(802) 380-9773
 
 
 

 
 

PASTELS

 
Lesley Heathcote
Lesley used pastels to create bucolic images of animals and birds.
32 Larkin St.
Brattleboro VT 05301
(802) 257-0951

DIGITAL ART

 
Michel Moyse
Michel, a former film editor, created unique digital art projected onto an interactive screen.
81 Pleasant Valley Rd
West Brattleboro 05301
(802) 257-7605

Vermont Open Studios 2019, Part 1

Incredible Artistry in the Green Mountain State

We recently spent a peak fall foliage weekend visiting artists’ studios and workshops around southern and central Vermont. The quality and variety of the craftsmanship that we discovered on Saturday, the first day, was so enthralling that we repeated the expedition in a new region on Sunday.

Vermont Open Studio Weekend is a fascinating event organized twice a year by the Vermont Crafts Council, a nonprofit comprised of artists that seeks to nurture public appreciation for “the quality, beauty, and history of Vermont crafts and artwork in order to encourage and sustain the creation of original craft and art work in Vermont.”
 
Vermont is amazingly welcoming of artists, and they return the favor with a fierce devotion to their craft and by generously welcoming people into their studios and even their lives.
 
Open Studios Map and Guide
We found nests of artistic production and inspiration on Main Streets and at the ends of dirt roads. We saw price tags in galleries ranging from $10 to $1,200. We often found the cast-offs, pieces discounted because they were not deemed high enough quality, to be as interesting as the finished pieces. Unfortunately, as wanderers whose possessions need to fit in the back of our truck, we are not in the position to acquire art right now, but we saw many pieces that we wanted. In the end, I bought one colored-clay necklace.

The Tour

We spend the first day around Brattleboro, a city in the southeast corner of the state that attracts a disproportionate percentage of artists, many of them New York transplants. The second day we visited a studio in Ludlow, where we’re staying, and then headed west toward Shrewsbury, Castleton and Rutland.
 
 
The Studios
 
We discovered that most Vermont craftspeople work in
studios located in or close to their homes. Some were near downtown areas (Brattleboro) or even on the main street (Castleton), but many more were in remote areas, far off the beaten path. We drove many miles up narrow mountain roads and around bends, through gold-and- red dappled fields and past squawking wild turkeys, to find studios inside barns surrounded by trees and fields. These were places we never would have discovered on our own, but bright yellow “Vermont Open Studios” signs directed us to each new discovery and beckoned us in.
 
The artists’ studios were amazingly diverse and told part of the story about their residents – whether it was a basement transformed into a woodturning workshop, a drafty wooden barn, a retrofitted garage, an upstairs bedroom or a large, beautiful dream studio made of barn wood and giant windows. A former film editor who had worked on major studio films in New York had built a huge, slick studio barn for his oversized digital art.

Diane Echlin’s studio
Nature’s Turn’s studios
Maya Zelkin’s off-the-grid studio
 
Orchard Street Pottery studio in Brattleboro
Michel Moyse’s Digital Art studio

The Tools

 
The artists’ tools, often self-crafted, showed real ingenuity.
 
One woodturner had retrofitted an optical stand he bought for $5 at a local fireman’s auction into a tool holder. Another created an electric hammer because his hands got so sore from hammering metal. Several had designed and built wood kilns or stoves out of bricks and mortar, sometimes even dismantling them to move and then reconstructing them in a new location. Most of the potters, not satisfied with any commercial product, created their own glazes.

Maya Zelkin’s handmade wood-fired kiln
Sanford Stagnell’s Hammer Machine

The Effort

Not one did anything the easy way.
 
They labored painstakingly to produce the detailed result they wanted, even if meant waiting a year while wood cured before carving it, rebuilding an entire kiln because it didn’t heat right, or disregarding wood-turning machines in favor of the rougher precision of hand tools and elbow grease.

 
 

Next up: 

Vermont Open Studios 2019, Part 2: Meet the Artists

Author: Lisa By Lisa Hamm-Greenawalt

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