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Health & Fitness

Local Artists Invite Studio Visitors To "Fall Into Winter"

Local artists invite visitors to make a connection with art by participating in the Boyertown-Oley area "Fall Into Winter" artists' studio and gallery tour Nov. 18-20.

Lovers of art and crafts, as well as holiday shoppers, can satisfy their passion this weekend by attending the second annual “Fall into Winter,” an artists’ studio and gallery driving tour featuring eight working studios in the Boyertown - Oley area.

The tour will run Nov. 18 - 20, but visitors should check specific days and times for each location at  http://studiobbb.org/fall-into-winter/, where they can also find details about each venue’s offerings. Several stops on the tour will feature multiple artists, easily bringing the number of participants to over 30. 

In addition to providing an opportunity to enjoy and purchase the work of local artists, several stops will offer refreshments, tours, music, and the chance to see artists at work. Also, visitors may have the good luck to win one of eight pieces of art valued at over $25, each piece donated by one of the venues. Winners will be selected randomly from punch cards submitted at each visitor’s last stop. Studios can be visited in any order; punch cards will be distributed and collected at all locations.

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“Discovering Local Art” Provides Tour Goal

The tour provides “a means to bring people to the area to experience the wealth of local art that is available,” explains Lyn Camella, co-owner of Dancing Tree Creations, one of the tour stops.

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“With all the concerns about our struggling economy, we want to encourage people to become familiar with, and take advantage of, all of the wonderful talent that is here,” adds Beth Rich, a major organizer of the tour and Dancing Tree co-owner. Dancing Tree showcases the work of outstanding artists around the country. About 25 of them are local and more are added all the time as a result of the diversity of talent and skill that Camella and Rich have discovered in the area.

Open Studio Concept Evolves

The local version of this annual open studio concept was inaugurated almost 40 years ago, when Linda Rohrbach-Austerberry, local potter, decided to kick off the holiday season in November by opening her studio to art lovers who expressed interest in her work and to holiday gift shoppers. Over the following years, positive feedback motivated her to invite a few other local artists to join her at her home-studio.  But in 2010, Rohrbach-Austerberry decided it was time to take the concept to the next level: “After I attended several garden tours and an Allentown area art tour, I decided it would be wonderful to try something like that here,” she recalls. 

Encouraged by the success of Boyertown’s Studio B that is home to the Arts and Activities Alliance sub-committee of Building A Better Boyertown, Rorhbach-Austerberry pitched her concept to Arts and Activities chairwoman Jane Stahl and other committee members. Stahl summarizes the committee’s enthusiastic response explaining, “We are delighted that the art related venues are collaborating and making it easier for people to know them. We want to make Boyertown a destination for the arts.” Like Camella, Rorhbach-Austerberry wants folks “to know who the local artists are and to take advantage of the talent that is here.”

To get things moving, Rohrbach-Austerberry contacted two other local potters: Jen Baro of White House Farm Pottery and Gifts and Danielle Fisher, owner of Clayote in Boyertown. They liked the concept and decided to contact other local artists; things fell into place. Like the other artists who are participating, Will Dexter, owner – artist of Taylor Backes Glass, is glad for another way to get his message out. “We love to share with the world what we do and the limitless potential of glass,” he says. Camella adds, “We are not competing with each other; we want to augment one another with our varied mediums and styles.”

Organizers Hope Visitors Will Forge A Connection

 Camella and Rich bring the goal of the “Fall Into Winter” art tour into focus by quoting the philosophy they share on their webpage: “We want our customers to know who created the works they purchase and how the items were made. We believe this knowledge helps create a connection, a special feeling, every time the piece is viewed, worn, or used. It is this unique connection that is lost in today’s atmosphere of mass production, a connection that we want to help revive.” Hopefully, tour visitors will forge this connection 

 

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