Oct. 2 & 3 — Attention art lovers: mark your calendars for the Vermont Open Studio Weekend happening at Stone Valley Arts Center at Fox Hill in Poultney on Oct. 2 and 3. Stop by and enjoy meeting local artists! This year’s event will showcase the work of local artists including Dick Weis, Denise Letendre, Deena Howard, Mary Fran Lloyd, Donna Ciobanu, and Erika Schmidt. Painting, photography, printmaking and collage will be on display and for sale on the art center’s front lawn and indoors along with Monotype Guild of New England’s Priority Prints exhibit.
All artists who have an artist’s membership with SVA are welcome to set up a booth at the weekend’s event. Artist membership dues for visual, performing and literary members is $50/ per year. SVA offers benefits to its artist members, including artist profiles on the SVA website, along with a short bio, three images and a link to your website. And the chance to be included in special members only annual shows.
The Vermont Craft Council’s Open Studio Weekend has been a tradition in October since 1993. It offers residents and visitors alike a chance to meet artists and craftspeople and to learn about their process, and to buy art directly from the source. To find additional participating artists studios throughout the state visit vermontcrafts.com.
Currently on exhibit at Stone Valley Arts is the Priority Prints show of 140 monotypes created by 80 artist members of the Monotype Guild of New England.
This is an evocative collection of art that invites visitors to slow down and look closely. Many artists submitted works that speak directly to their experiences, escapes and solutions for living through a pandemic. You will find that many artists chose nature as their subject where landscape reflects personal observation, memory or physical presence in nature. There are works about loneliness and loss …or about dreams and there is work that is powerfully focused on social issues, racial and ethnic injustice or climate change. Look for the pieces in which the artists have chosen to study ordinary objects or physical places that mark time and point to the beautiful mysteries of the mundane. Some artists record moods and emotions as expressed through the human body and others create with the ‘composite image’ or collage sensibility allowing for open interpretation. The artists in this exhibition explored a wide range of printmaking methods beyond the direct roll of ink on a hard surface that include: etching, woodcut, linocut, lithography, screen printing, cyanotype, collograph, solar plate, gel plate and many more. On display at SVA until October 17.
