Vashon Island Spring Art Studio Tour

The Spring 2013 Vashon Island Art Studio Tour will be held on two weekends, May 4th-5th and 11th-12th, 10-5 each day. It’s a free, self-guided event with 23 participating studios. Follow the numbers designated on the Studio Tour map which is available online at www.VashonIslandArtStudioTour.com and at most island businesses.
 

Mary Ann Beardsley of "The Chick Barn" (#7 On the Map at 16209 Crescent Dr SW) hosts several artists in her pleasant Westside space overlooking the Colvos Passage. She says "I make beaded and glass jewelry mostly out of crystals and glass beads. I try to make pieces that are affordable. I like to mix and match a lot of colors, shapes and sizes. I make necklaces, earrings, bracelets and I use a lot of the Swarovski Crystal from Austria because it has a lot of shine to it.
 

"The Chick Barn is an offshoot from Sharon Munger’s ‘Coop,’ since she’s no longer doing ‘Barnworks.’ So a lot of the artists who were in the ‘Coop’ are going to be coming over here. There will be about 15 artists with soaps, cutting boards, vases, silk scarves, prints, jewelry, wooden bowls, pottery, fabric arts and quilting. It will be very eclectic – a nice venue for people, a little marketplace."
 

Mary Margaret Briggs (#6 On the Map at 12500 SW 158th St) is a print maker who is experimenting with a new style. She uses leaves to make impressions with ink on paper which gives her pieces an interesting natural quality. "I call this process ‘Botanical Monotypes.’ I cut my prints apart and then create compositions with the different pieces. It might be many pieces of paper or just a few. In my process I print for a couple of days and then when I have an amount of work that I like I stop printing and move on to the collage part of the process.
 

"I pick a theme in terms of color – related colors – at the beginning that I print with. Then I mix up those ink colors and I gather a grouping of leaves that I think would complement each other. Then I get to work making prints. I let the prints dry, then I cut the prints apart and glue them on to hard panels. When they’re finished I put several coats of a clear acrylic coating on them to protect them. Then they’re ready to hang."
 

Sheree Tomoson of the"Empty Nest Studio" (#1 On the Map at 14612 Vashon Hwy) is a jewelry maker who likes to use natural materials. "My art is a reflection of my love of rocks and sea glass and other natural materials that I’ve taken into the jewelry realm. Instead of doing painting and paper art like I used to, I now have texture and depth which the rocks and the silver and other metals bring me. I like to make jewelry that’s different, I want it to express the art of the stones and the glass but also be kind of on the different and funky side, not always fit into the normal realms of traditional jewelry. It wasn’t intentional, but growing up on Vashon led to my art reflecting the environment here. I’m a product of this kind of interesting place that Vashon is. I think that the jewelry really shows that."
 

Gordon Barnet - "GRB Bells" (#5 On the Map at 15810 Shanahan Rd) makes silver and bronze bells in his studio. He’s been making bells for over thirty years now, and discusses the process and his inspiration. "I’ve been a jeweler since a part time job in college, even though I studied painting. The bells came along as a way to do a production line rather than the one-of-a-kind pieces that I had been doing, because I wanted to spread things out, both in terms of the numbers of pieces that I could produce and making them more affordable than the custom one-of-a-kind gold and diamond pieces like I was doing. Plus the bells made me happy, so thirty years ago I started with the bells and they’ve maintained as a small business for myself ever since that. I love the technical parts of the process, especially carving the wax, and I live under magnification. I tolerate some of the more mechanical parts of the process – polishing is fun, mold making is a very technical skill that I’ve taught myself over the last 25 years, but casting I don’t do anymore. I had a friend set up a casting foundry in order to do that work for me. The bells made me happy, they made other people happy and they continue to be a great joy to me from start to finish. One advantage of the bells is that it’s a sort of a blank palette. They don’t have to fit a finger or an ear, so it’s a piece of sculpture where I can play with all kinds of designs. I’m very eclectic, I love history and mythology, numerology and botany, so designs come from the garden, from my fantasies and from lots of historical roots."
 

Ilse and Hartmut Reimnitz of the "Reimnitz Studio" (#12 On the Map at 23505 80th Ave SW) are painters. Their studio also hosts their son, Gunter, who is a wildlife sculptor, and who makes life-sized herons and other birds that really seem to fly.
 

Hartmut tells me "I used to be a commercial fisherman, mostly out of Alaska, and when I quit ten years ago I became a painter. I paint in oil, mostly I’m self-taught, and I paint boats, fishing boats, and landscapes, waterscapes. It’s been great fun. We came from Germany in 1963 so this year’s a big year for us, we’re fifty years in America."
 

Ilse says "I do monotype and watercolor. I’ve done watercolor for over thirty years, I studied art in Germany. I paint floral, landscape, abstract and I use the same subjects for the monotypes. I also teach workshops in watercolor and monotype in my studio."
 

Visiting Vashon is great fun any time, but with these and the other artists on the tour opening their studios for you the next two weekends promise some wonderful surprises.