The Studio Tour is back after a two-year forced hiatus! This is the last of four articles in honor of the Tour’s 20th anniversary, each featuring 3 of the 38 artists participating on the tour
Danielle Hutchins, a multifaceted artist with a background in art direction and graphic design, has spent nearly a decade working behind the screen but felt the need to move into mediums in which she could express herself through her hands in the analog mediums of paintings and hand-thrown ceramics.
Her sophisticated paintings move between thickly layered abstractions and bright, representational imagery that feel almost Matisse-like, with her flat and elegant compositions.
Nature inspires her and she honors it by not only incorporating it into her work visually but also by creating her paintings in an environmentally neutral manner by sourcing her own pigments from hikes and mixing them with nontoxic binders, like walnut oil. She’s also been using recycled clay for color on unprimed canvas.
Her utilitarian ceramics (cups, bowls, vases) in warm, earthen colors are clearly meant to be used, but are art objects in their own right.
Whatever the medium, her work exudes a sense of elegant joie de vivre.
Danielle is showing at her home, the first Tour stop in the Fernwood area, joined by Stacy Haviland, a fine jeweler who has been one of the most popular stops in prior Tours.
Online: www.bydaniellehutchens.com, www.pippinhilljewelry.com
Kelsey Zwang is a mixed media artist whose most recent work includes a series called “California Map” that is inspired by contemporary Aboriginal artists. These extraordinary paintings are beautifully pointillistic, with an all-over pattern that moves them between abstraction and representation.
The second series is comprised of flowers painted in watercolor and block mounted. Zwang is clearly gifted in her craft and the works are hypnotically detailed without being illustrative.
Zwang’s philosophy is to “soothe the soul” and this is exemplified not only in her art but in her life; she worked through the pandemic as a registered nurse to heal those around her and her work is an extension of that personal doctrine.
Zwang will be showing at Rosewood Studios, with three other artists working in a variety of mediums. Trudy Perry works in woven wall art, Rebecca Catterall’s ceramics are well known throughout the canyon, and Mark Estes, who is new to the Tour, creates art with a combination of light, wood, acrylic and other mediums.
Online: www.kelseyzwang.com, www.catterallceramics.com, www.estesdezine.com, @trudyperrydesigns
Caroline PM Jones is a painter, sculptor and memorialist. Her recent ceramic sculptures, oil paintings and sketches are based on the precepts of Gongshi (Chinese, naturally occurring or shaped rocks) or Suiseki (Japanese, small, natural rocks). Her works are dynamic and otherworldly, yet they continue to reference nature, synthesizing the organic and ethereal into a physical medium, capturing formlessness into form.
“Stones and their presence have forever been a preoccupation of mine, I’ve always been fascinated with what is held within stone, what stories or spirit or captured time is represented. Throughout history man has related to stones for tools, for art, for monuments, for ancestor worship and celestial notations. This new series and my work as a memorialist and monument maker, connect what is above with what is below, grounding it in these totemic forms.”
Caroline is showing at her home with beautiful views high on Saddle Peak. She has opened her home to fellow sculptor Rude Calderon and popular abstract artist Moises Mendoza.
Online: www.cpmjones.com, www.rudecalderon.com, www.moisesmendoza.com
Make sure you save the date: June 11 and 12. A ticket is for the entire weekend, so visitors can see as many of the 17 locations as desired. Each guest will receive a full color graphic map of the tour with an image and information about each artist. Tickets are available at www.topangacanyongallery.com/studiotour. The Gallery will host an exhibition of one work by each participating artists two weekends prior to the tour, as well as a silent auction of small works May 27 – June 12.
