Rock River Artists Tour

Rock River Artists Tour
Release Date: Monday, July 9th 2007
THE 15TH ROCK RIVER OPEN STUDIO TOUR:
ARTISTS REINVENT AND REDISCOVER NEW WAYS OF SEEING AND MAKING ART

Newfane, VT--—"I just saw a wood garden!" A six-year old announced as she, and her family, walked down stone steps from a pasture where an artist was displaying his found wood sculptures. From 10 AM-6 PM on Saturday, July 21 and Sunday, July 22, visitors of all ages will enjoy the 15th Rock River Artists’ Open Studio Tour, which will take them through the villages of South Newfane, Williamsville and Newfane to the studios of 24 artists, including painters, printmakers, photographers, ceramicists, sculptors, metal-workers, and furniture-makers, who live there. The tour begins at the historic Old Schoolhouse in South Newfane, where an overview of all artists' works will be on display. Visitors then receive a map and choose which studios to visit on the self-guided tour.

Through the picture windows of artist Ellen Darrow Aho’s 18th century home, one can see thousands of blooming daylilies, planted among six acres, as her family’s Olallie Daylily Gardens continue to grow through three-generations of care. Darrow carves playful and imaginative animals, faces and botanical images on green ware, which are thrown and fired by her neighbor, longtime collaborator, and master of American raku, Richard Foye. Darrow Aho “likes the feeling of the whole pot,” she says, “ the movement, balance and composition.” She also creates striking collaged mixed media works from remnants of older etchings, pastels, drawings and paintings—something Darrow Aho began a few years ago, when, newly widowed, she began to reinvent familiar means of creative expression.

Recycling and reinventing materials also inspires Lauri Richardson, who remarked, “I have a sugar house full of brightly colored junk,” referring to the vast collection of discarded pot shards, broken plates and tiles from which she painstakingly creates mosaic tables, animals and story plaques. Her most recent mosaic story plaques are red, white and blue tile flags with words on them, representing fragments of conversation Richardson has had with viewers who have come to see her Iraq War Memorial project. This installation of small flags, one for each fallen American soldier in Iraq, has garnered Richardson both accolades and controversial notice. Hand-painted by volunteers, including school children, nursing home residents, and the community at large, the flags have grown in number over the past two years and have been displayed in Newfane and Brattleboro. For the Rock River Tour, nearly 3500 flags will run from the center of Williamsville up Timson Hill to Richardson’s studio.

With thread and fabric, Deidre Scherer also creates tableaus that provoke dialogue essential to our times. Particularly noted for her fabric portraits of elderly individuals including the cover art for When I Am An Old Woman I Shall Wear Purple and recently for her film interview in Holding Our Own, Scherer’s work addresses the natural processes of aging and death in our society. Nationally and internationally known for her work, Scherer pioneered her technique in the ‘70s by using fabric, scissors and sewing machine, the way an artist might use canvas, brushes and paint. By freely drawing with her scissors and layering her palette of fabric, she captures light and shadow, nuance, gesture, and complex, emotional expression. Presently, Scherer is creating a series of icons mounted on gold jacquards, a large-scale narrative work, and several commissioned portraits.

A pioneering spirit also marks the artistic path of Chauncey Berdan, new this year to the Rock River Tour, who worked as a teacher, town administrator and in other vocations until twelve years ago, when Berdan found himself before a potter’s wheel. In a little over a decade, he has managed to master wheel-thrown, gas high-fired stoneware, both functional and decorative, that is made with hand-mixed, primarily earth-toned and organic glazes. Berdan, who explains he is inspired by Japanese design, sprays glazes, in delicate curves and arcs, on his pots for added texture and depth. Fresh to the area a year ago, Berdan works and sells his stoneware at Three Dot Pottery, located in a log cabin off Route 30 in Newfane.

Furniture-maker Chris Ericson also finds inspiration in Japanese design, what Ericson calls an “Asian aesthetic with Shaker influence.” A meticulously hand-crafted cherry desk with blistered maple, for example, reveals his interest in combining refined materials with unrefined, rougher materials to create remarkably balanced and harmonious pieces of not just furniture, but furniture-as-fine-art. Ericson, too, is an explorer as he strives to find his hardwoods locally, sometimes in the woods behind his house in South Newfane or along a river nearby.

Visitors, young and old, on the Rock River Artists’ Open Studio Tour will find delight in the abundance of flowers, such as daylilies, roses, black-eyed Susan’s and bee balm as they wander through the villages and back roads to the various homes, studios and gardens of the two dozen artists on the tour. Perhaps they will discover, as did metal sculptor and blacksmith Rich Gillis, who built his home in this verdant pocket of the Green Mountains eight years ago, that "there is magic around here.”

The self-guided tour meanders around the five-mile radius of three villages: Newfane, South Newfane and Williamsville, which are ten miles northwest of Brattleboro, just off of Route 30.
Maps will be available at the Vermont Welcome Center on I-91 (just south of Exit 1), and at each studio location, as well as at the Old Schoolhouse in South Newfane