For 26 years, the Cultural Council of Santa Cruz County has presented the Open Studios Art Tour, generating about $1 million in sales per year for upward of 300 county artists and nurturing the creativity the region is known for.
The event takes place the first three weekends of October, featuring artists in North County (north of the Santa Cruz yacht harbor) on Oct. 1 and 2 and in South County on Oct. 8 and 9, with an encore of certain artists in both regions Oct. 15 and 16.
Pottery as an art
“I’m still making stuff that will go in the kiln tomorrow morning and will be done Saturday,” says potter Andrea Dana-McCullough, a three-year veteran of the event, with an exhausted smile, standing in her sun-drenched garage studio on Pinecone Drive in Scotts Valley this week.
Dana-McCullough’s work is composed of intricately carved patterns, animals (she has an affinity for birds, especially ravens, and recently beetles) and landscapes woven together with a practiced and patient grace on beautifully thrown porcelain pieces.
“There’re little stories happening on the inside of the bowls. Not many people do that,” Dana-McCullough says of her carvings. “It’s really labor intensive, and you can be working on a piece for hours and stick your tool through it, and that’s just the end.”
Dana-McCullough, who does all of her drawings — the basis for the carvings — freehand, has been in love with clay since elementary school and has studied art from virtually every culture, both on her own and in institutional settings.
“I think about how the design’s going to fit on the form and accentuate it,” she says. “The interiors of the bowls are really hard to carve, because you’re working on a curve. But I actually don’t want them to be absolutely perfectly spaced. … It gives them kind of a unique look.”
Her studio at 760 Pinecone Drive in Scotts Valley will be open for public viewing Oct. 1 and 2.
Working wood in Scotts Valley
Another distinctive local artist, one of this year’s 57 newcomers, is woodworker Charles Mitchell.
“I’m a fifth-generation Californian, and we’re all woodworkers on my dad’s side,” Mitchell says. “It’s kind of a family tradition.”
An aesthetic man of admirable aspirations and inspirations — he cites Frank Lloyd Wright, and contemporary sculptors and painters as influences — Mitchell uses boatbuilding techniques learned from his grandfather that are not common to furniture design.
“I really like to use local woods and will hunt down specific stuff for a project,” he says this week, petting his dog in his studio on Scotts Valley Drive, in which beautifully rendered cabinets and tables and even a 14-foot boat sit casually in various stages of completion. “They (boatbuilding techniques) lend themselves to things that most guys would not want to do.”
Hoping to get more involved in the artistic aspects of his craft, Mitchell is looking forward to the coming studio tour.
“I was pleased and honored to be picked,” he says, standing beneath a drawing by Frank Lloyd Wright that he framed himself. “It’s somewhat hard to get in, depending on what you’re doing, so that was quite an honor.”
His shop will be open Oct. 1 and 2 at 5042A Scotts Valley Drive, behind Scotts Valley Carwash.
Embroidery inspired by masters
Ben Lomond’s Mardeen Gordon discovered many years ago that Vincent Van Gogh’s side-by-side paint strokes in his famed painting “Starry Night” lend themselves to embroidery, because of the nature of the medium’s colored floss.
“You can’t blend (colors) easily,” Gordon said. “That’s why Van Gogh is so appropriate, because you don’t have to blend it.”
She embroidered a reproduction of “Starry Night” on the back of her future husband’s jacket, and it has stood the test of more than two decades years, being transferred to several new jackets.
Her “Starry Night” was embroidered in 1989.
Today, she’s taken her hobby to new heights. Gordon, who works professionally as a sign maker in Silicon Valley, creates embroidered reproductions of images that inspire her.
Every embroidered work of art has a story behind it — from a storybook scene in which Harry Potter catches the snitch, a winged golden ball, to a rendition of the Mona Lisa and her conspicuously missing eyebrows.
Each takes 250 to 350 hours to complete in fine, minute detail. Gordon says the image takes on a life of its own as she works.
“It’s as if I have the artist standing over my shoulder,” she says. “I really get into their head.”
She’s also started to create fade-resistant giclee prints of her images on canvas.
Gordon’s work will be shown and sold at the Santa Cruz Mountains Art Center, 9341 Mill St., in Ben Lomond on Oct. 1 and 2.
At a glance
WHAT: Open Studios Art Tour
When: Saturdays and Sundays, Oct. 1 through 16 from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Details: A calendar with a map of artists’ studios is available for $20 online at www.ccscc.org, in Ben Lomond at the Santa Cruz Mountains Art Center, in Felton at the White Raven, in Scotts Valley at Surf City Coffee, Santa Cruz County Bank, The Art Store or Zinnia’s, and at many other locations.
