Eight art galleries and private studios throughout the High Country are opening their doors to the public in a weekend of demonstrations.
The Most Beautiful Art Tour in Alberta is celebrating Alberta Culture Days with an open studio tour featuring a diverse group of artists and craftspeople Sept. 25 to 27.
Among them are glassblowers Julia Reimer and Tyler Rock, of Firebrand Studio in Black Diamond, who are offering glassblowing demonstrations and selling a range of their autumn-themed glass creations over the weekend.
“Glass is beautiful to look at when it’s room temperature, but molten glass - that’s the best form for glass because it glows like the sun and it’s a liquid like honey,” said Reimer. “It’s an incredible material to look at before you’ve even done anything with it.”
Reimer, one of the tour’s founding members, said the event was developed to promote the Foothills’ abundant talent in the arts.
“People would come to our studio and say, ‘What else could I do here?” she said. “Our area is so rich in art and culture… I’m naturally a fan of what other things are going on and I want to share that with other people.”
Seeing artists at work is a big part of the tour’s appeal, attracting upwards of 150 people to Firebrand Studio in a single weekend, Reimer said.
“When you get a chance to see somebody working on art and creating art you get this other insight as to what is so skillful,” she said. “With the art tour it’s a chance for people to develop some other layer of understanding.”
Reimer and Rock kept busy the past several months meeting the needs of their clients.
“We have clients that we’ve created pieces for over the years and a lot of them were really thinking, this is the time we’re going to get a chandelier made or we’ve always wanted something special for this part of our house,” said Reimer. “We feel so lucky because when this all happened and everything shut down Tyler and I were like, we can still blow glass and work together in the studio.
“Working with glass is like meditation. It’s so healing.”
In Turner Valley, acrylic painter Mady Thiel-Kopstein will demonstrate her painting techniques while displaying a range of her abstract and nature paintings throughout the weekend.
“Lately I’ve been painting my ravens because they are always a really good seller and I love to do them,” she said. “I’ve been doing some abstract work and I’ve got landscapes and flowers and all things natural that I just love to paint - things that inspire me. I paint where I live and where I am.”
Thiel-Kopstein will display a range of paintings in various sizes and prices, a 2020 calendar featuring her art and art cards.
Having participated in the tour for three years, Thiel-Kopstein said this year will look different than the others, particularly for the four private studios, in light of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Masks are required in private homes and some people will be limiting how many people they let in at one time,” she said. “We will be exercising safe distancing.”
The number of visitors to Thiel-Kopstein’s studio has ranged from 15 to 75 people in a single weekend.
“Last year the road was completely snowed under and even then I had about 15 people come through,” she said. “I don’t know how they got up the road but they came.”
Thiel-Kopstein said she not only participates in the tours for the opportunity to meet people face-to-face and explain her craft to them, but for the camaraderie and partnership opportunities with the other artists.
“It keeps you connected with what’s going on,” she said. “There is more power when we all are promoting together. We can all get the word out to a wider range. You have a bigger voice.”
Other tour participants are the Bluerock Gallery with a ceramics exhibit, Eversfield Ceramics with technique demonstrations, Kristoferson Studio with paper arts demonstrations from origami ornaments to painting productions of 1700’s historic paste papers, the Leighton Art Centre with its In The Open Air juried plein air exhibition, Lineham House Galleries with local artists demonstrating their methods and the Okotoks Art Gallery with its annual Members Show & Sale and art demonstrations.
