Saturday and Sunday, July 30 – 31, over twenty artists in Andes, Margaretville and Roxbury area (AMR, for short) will open their studios to the public, and show their working spaces. During the tour, artists working in all media will talk about their styles and techniques, and the process of making art. Launched in 2012, AMR has been a great success, attracting a large number of visitors summer after summer. Similar tours take place all over the country, as open studios have become quite popular in recent years.

This year AMR features artists such as: painter and printmaker Amy Masters; architect, printmaker and photographer Ted Sheridan; urban landscape painter Lisbeth Firmin; ceramicists and printmakers Peter Yamaoka and Gerda Van Leeuwen; landscape painter Ellen Wong; weaver Tabitha Gilmore-Barnes; and poet and furniture designer Gary Mead, among others.

Amy Masters

Amy Masters has been an artist all her life. Formally trained as painter and printmaker, she pursued a degree in Interior Design at the Parsons School of Design, and worked as a draftsman for an engineering firm in New York City, before dedicating herself exclusively to painting and drawing. For over two decades, she taught in the New York City’s public school system, and spent her summers painting and drawing the world around. Moving to the Catskills in 2006, she was suddenly given far more space and limitless opportunities for inspiration. Amy likes to think about her work as being inspired by the natural world and the actual objects and vistas around her studio. But she likes to re-arrange and re-envision the landscape in the abstract. What is important to an abstract painter, says Amy, is the relationship between colors, lines and shapes, and the complexities of pattern and texture that emerge at the end of the process.

Her color palette changes periodically. Last summer, for instance, she was working extensively in blue, green, and red. This summer she enjoys exploring the possibilities of various shades of white, beige, and grey. But she always likes to add an unexpected dot of red somewhere on the canvas to surprise and intrigue the viewer.

A couple of years ago Amy re-discovered her passion for prints, and after taking an etching class in the City and working in a printmaking studio, she began producing prints using a variety of techniques. She currently works on a series of prints inspired by feathers. “When I was doing these prints, I was thinking how unique and individual these feathers were, and that resonated with the process too. Because each time you make one of these monotypes, they’re completely different.”

Amy will be showing her prints during the open studios tour later this month, and will be talking about various printmaking techniques. Her studio is located at 222 Chris Long Road in Arkville.

Ted Sheridan

Ted Sheridan is an architect, printmaker, and photographer. He has taught courses on architectural acoustics and the acoustics of musical instruments at the Parsons School of Design, and has lectured at the University of Virginia, Ryerson University, and the University of Toronto.

Six years ago, Ted began experimenting with metallic compounds, corrosion, and magnetic fields to create original patterns of rust on paper. For his very first project he used old, rusty car parts, and after leaving them out in the rain on a piece of paper, he discovered an immense array of shapes and shades that he did not expect. Coming from the world of architecture where everything is controlled and precise, Ted sat to explore the randomness of the oxidation process, and began working on more and more elaborate projects.

About a dozen prints are hanging in his studio at this time. Each one of them was produced by a different method and stylistic approach; some are concentric circles reminiscent of nebulas in space, others are rectangular stripes imposing in their own right. All these will be shown during the open studios tour on Saturday and Sunday, July 30 – 31.

Ted’s studio is located at 222 Chris Long Road in Arkville.

Lisbeth Firmin

Lisbeth Firmin is a contemporary American realist known for her urban landscapes. For over four decades her work has been in hundreds of solo and group shows across the country and internationally. She was cover artist for the 2008 spring issue of Epoch, Cornell University’s literary magazine, and was the featured artist in the 2008 summer issue of the Gettysburg Review. Awards include a 2007 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship for printmaking (Lily Auchincloss Fellow) and a Merit Award at the 2007 Roberson Regional Art Exhibition, Binghamton, NY, juried by Philip Pearlstein. Lisbeth was awarded a Community Arts Funding Grant, New York State Council on the Arts in 2007. Other awards include a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, the New York Print Club Emerging Artist Award, the CCVA Award at the Chautauqua Center for the Visual Arts, first prize in the LANA International Arts Competition; along with full fellowships to the MacDowell Colony, National Seashore Residency, the Vermont Studio Center and Saltonstall Arts Colony.

Asked about her artistic process, Lisbeth responded: “I can’t explain that. It’s a visceral thing. I could be walking around, and doing grocery shopping or some other mundane stuff like that. And I see something, and I say I want to paint that. I don’t even verbalize it. It’s more like I could paint that, I want to paint that. Now I always have my little iPhone with me. And what’s happening these days is that I see something about the light on a figure, and this is what interests me. And it just comes naturally to me: I know exactly where to put the paint, and how to capture the light. I’m moving away from buildings and streetscapes.” Lisbeth says that her work is not about the colors, but about the light and shadow in the composition, apparent in works such as Fifth Avenue (1995), and Woman on a Train (2014).

To learn more about the artist, read our extensive interview with Lisbeth: https://artinthecatskills.com/2015/08/31/featured-artist-lisbeth-firmin. Her studio is located in the Commons Building at 785 Main Street, Margaretville.

Peter Yamaoka and Gerda Van Leeuwen

Artists Peter Yamaoka and Gerda Van Leeuwen met in a Boston airport in the early 1980s as they were both traveling to and from Provincetown. They married three years later. Peter studied at the prestigious Rhode Island School of Design, while Gerda received a degree in art from the University of Utrecht in her native Netherlands. In college both Peter and Gerda studied painting. Later in their artistic careers, they specialized in printmaking: Peter chose lithographs, while Gerda directed her attention to etchings. Since moving to the Catskills in the early 1990s both artists switched to ceramics: Peter prefers voluminous mythology-inspired vases, while Gerda makes small porcelains inspired by animal life. In Tribeca Peter and Gerda operated a printmaking shop. In the Catskills, they opened a fully equipped ceramics studio, where they both work and teach classes. Both artists have exhibited extensively in New York City and throughout the Catskills.

Peter’s vases are inspired by ancient Chinese motifs, Greek mythology, Mexican folklore, and the Catskills scenery. All his vases are both functional and decorative at the same time: “they’re sculptures,” Peter tells me. They withhold on top whimsical cities or mythological figures, an invitation to imagining and exploring. He also makes dioramas, fully employing the narrative feature of this form of art. All his vases and bowls are hand-made out of clay, then fired on an electrical kiln, and glazed in expressive, telling ways.

Gerda makes small porcelains inspired by animal life – primarily dogs and coyotes that we ordinarily see in the Catskills. Her anthropomorphic approach often leads to scenes of dancing dogs in a very human-like posture – portrayals that remind me of Matisse’s Dance. Victorian era practice of combining human heads and animal bodies or vice versa to awing effect in art also pops into my head. Gerda makes monotype prints on rice paper and canvas, similarly inspired by highly anthropomorphic pursuits. A large printing press occupies the central space of one of the studios.

On occasion Gerda makes woodblock prints. She currently works on a large scale wall piece using water based ink on paper and wood panel. A metal template is used to create a specific pattern that recurs throughout the composition. This particular work is done primarily in blue and gold hues. It will soon hang in a New York City apartment.

Both Peter and Gerda are proud of their garden: the artists craft copious outdoor pieces that blend organically with the landscape. The tree of life reappears sporadically throughout the garden. Peter and Gerda have participated in the AMR Open Studios Tour ever since the tour first launched in 2012. Every summer they open both their studios and the garden, and demonstrate ceramics and printmaking techniques. Peter and Gerda’s studios are located at 777 Carroll Hinkley Road in Roxbury.

Ellen Wong

The recipient of many grants and fellowships, including the New York State Council on the Arts Decentralization Grant Program, as well as a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, Ellen Wong is an accomplished painter and educator whose works have been exhibited both in New York City and the Catskills, going back to the 1970s. Ellen studied in the Art Department at Brooklyn College with Philip Pearlstein, known for reviving realist figurative painting in the 1960s. Pearlstein’s departure from Abstract Expressionism back then made him a renegade in the art world. It’s that kind of artistic sensibility and daring attitude that Ellen learned from Pearlstein.

Ellen herself was initially trained as an abstract painter, but in time she discovered that what she really wanted to do in life was landscape painting: “I noticed that every time I went somewhere I always brought with me my watercolors, and I always sketched where I was; somehow that’s how I got to understand, absorb or take in a new environment – I felt very sensitive to place,” she says. “And it was a good way for me to get to know a place. And I discovered that I had this desire to work outside, to work from life, and to work in watercolors, and that became in a way my primary medium,” she added.

Ellen’s studio is located at 121 Shephard Lane in Roxbury.

To learn more about Ellen, read our extensive interview with her at https://artinthecatskills.com/2014/10/18/featured-artist-ellen-wong/.

Tabitha Gilmore-Barnes

Tabitha Gilmore-Barnes is a professional weaver residing in Delaware County. She studied at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT), and the Center for Tapestry Arts in New York City. She designs both functional and aesthetic products using traditional American patterns. Her work can be seen in museums and gallery exhibits, and at various arts and crafts fairs throughout the region.

“Weaving is one of the oldest forms of a blend of art and function. The techniques of twisting fibers to make them stronger and durable started out probably in the earliest times of mankind history. From those twisted fibers men and women learned to do basketry, learned to create fabric, and also to use it for decoration. For instance, in a lot of the Native American pottery from the South-Western U.S. and Central and South America you will see that twisted fibers have been pressed up against the clay to create a pattern on that clay. It’s been made as an impression on the clay to make it look as it was woven. In reality, it is a three-dimensional structure that was never plated or twisted in itself,” explains Tabitha.

Tabitha says she loves the fact that weaving isn’t a forgotten art. She particularly enjoys the mathematical structure of setting up the loom, and is excited about what it takes to create fabric. Her favorite part is mixing the colors, and the texture of the yarns together. “To me that’s magical – how I get a piece of fabric: something out of nothing.”

Tabitha’s studio is located at 424 Carr George Road in Denver. To learn more about Tabitha, read our extensive interview with her at https://artinthecatskills.com/2015/01/31/featured-artist-tabitha-gilmore-barnes/.

Gary Mead

Poet and furniture designer Gary Mead grew up on a farm in New Kingston, and fell in love with wood as a teenager, when he began working in a sawmill. In 1979 he opened his own company Fruitful Furnishings, and for many years designed and built custom furniture for clients all over the country. “The woodworking passion would not leave me alone, so as I was running the mill and raising my three sons, I was working on my home in Arkville composing pantries, kitchen cabinets, furniture, floors, walls and ceilings from wood, practically turning my home into a museum of woods,” he says.

Gary’s artistic eye and his understanding of the wood led him in recent years to creating compositions from curved and more unusual wood. In 2011 he opened his art gallery, dedicated exclusively to wood. While some pieces are both functional and aesthetic, others are purely decorative. The floor in his gallery is representative of all the trees growing in the Catskill Mountains from walnut, beechnut, butternut, maple, cherry, and birch trees to various kinds of pine. All these have been used to designing durable tables, cabinets, and pantries. Gary proudly proclaims that all the compositions in his gallery are actually from woods within a fifty-mile radius from his galley. “I am excited to teach people about the wealth of wood we have right here in our back yard,” he says. He will be showing his gallery during the open studios tour on Saturday and Sunday, July 30 – 31. His studio is located at 1289 South Side Road in Margaretville.

The AMR Open Studios Tour takes place Saturday and Sunday, July 30 – 31, from 11 am to 5 pm both days. For maps and more information, visit http://www.amropenstudios.org/.

The AMR Open Studio Tour 2016 is funded by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts Decentralization Grant Program, with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the NYS Legislature, and is administered in Delaware County by The Roxbury Arts Group, and with fiscal support from The MARK Project and participating artists.

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© 2016 Simona David