TAL Blogs

 

Inside the Studios: A Look at Studios 2-5 on the 2025 Tour

By Anne Prine

Part 1 of Four

"The Smiles That Come In the Door,

And the Hugs That Are Given"

-Sue Lewis, on what a successful show means to her

Part 1 in a series covering the 20th annual Terravita Art League Artists Studio Tour, held March 21-22, 2025.

 

About the Terravita Art League's annual Artists Studio Tour, Sue Lewis described her feelings on what a good show means for her. Not lots of visitors. Not lots of sales. Not even lots of admiring comments. Just the warmth and friendship in the community.

Sue says, "This annual event is all about showcasing art. We spend so much of our lives creating, and we want to share it with our friends and neighbors."

2025 marks the 20-year history of the studio tour and saw 19 artists exhibiting at 16 studios. In this four-part series we'll provide a recap of the event.

From the top, here's a glimpse of the artists and what visitors saw at the studios:

 

STUDIO 2 - Judy Samotny

Judy uses gem stones, wood beads and artifacts gleaned from places such as gem shows, estate sales and more to craft beautiful custom, beaded jewelry.

A few of her signature pieces featured small, very detailed Tibetan pill boxes as pendants. The necklace shown here features turquoise stone, African wood beads and a small pill box.

 

STUDIO 3 - Wendy Klein, Jarrett DeMartino

Wendy Klein's fantasy sculptures and paintings and Jarrett DeMartino's phenomenal laser engraving work are always show-stoppers on the tour.

Jarrett creates very complex designs in wood, acrylic, glass, stone and other materials with laser engraving. His latest work features intricate detail engraved on clear acrylic as shown in the photo with him and Wendy.

Wendy has maintained a long career in 3D animation. She explained that outside of her computer-generated character work, she enjoys creating fanciful creatures using traditional stop-motion puppet-making techniques for her personal work. First she makes a wire armature and then overlays that with rubber, fabric and clay that is then sanded and finally painted with detail.

 

STUDIO 4 - Holly Messick

An artist in fused glass, both decorative and functional, Holly displayed some of her most recent work. Many pieces involve two or three layers of glass to yield various effects, as well as to add durability.

Her process for creating the delicate "coral bowl" involved placing strips of glass together in a single layer, firing to fuse them together, then placing the assembly over a stainless steel bowl and firing again to slump the glass into its bowl shape.

 

STUDIO 5 - Sue Lewis

As anyone who has enjoyed seeing Sue's work - both her silver jewelry and her mixed media creations - knows that her work is all about stimulating thought and introspection in the viewer. She often includes a message in her work as part of this purpose.

Sue has one room devoted to her Think Tank series, inspired by a quote from American artist Eric Fischl, "Empty heads filled with voices, no rules, only choices."

Sue teaches classes in silver jewelry.

 

---

 

Inside the Studios: A Look at Studios 6-10 on the 2025 Tour

By Anne Prine

Part 2 of 4

 

STUDIO 6 - Debra Hetzel Hanson

Debra's work ranges from nature's forms and beauty to the abstract. Her latest piece, "Orange Double Hibiscus," was voted by visitors as "most popular." She works primarily in watercolor and mixed media and keeps a "doodle book" with doodles that evolve into inspiration.

On offer at the art studio tour were a new series of original, handmade notecards in a technique known as gelli prints. Debra said the process involves "rolling paint onto a gelatin plate and pressing textures into it. Then you layer them. Every piece has two or more layers. Some cards have added pieces, and some even have metallic paint!"

Debra teaches Creative Mondays (all 2-D media) as well as classes in beginning watercolor. She also teaches fabric art with Suzy Fleury.

 

Studio 7 - Emilie Tribich

Emilie has been creating gemstone jewelry for more than 10 years. At one time, she also worked with high-fire ceramics.

As a very visual person, she attributes her motivation from seeing things that inspire and stimulate her thinking. To have visual recall contributes to her considering specific beads that in turn translates into her design objectives.

 

STUDIO 8 - Beate Darius

Well known for her creative and delicate hand-painted eggs, Beate more recently has been working with cow skulls, painting them in abstract designs with vivid acrylic colors and adding occasional embellishments with beads, flowers or other decorations. She was originally inspired to paint cow heads by a colorfully painted papier mãché dog she picked up in Mexico.

Beate teaches classes in painted eggshells.

 

STUDIO 10 - Robert LaPolice, Mary Knapp

Robert LaPolice creates digital art using computer programs, software applications and online tools to produce imaginative images because, as he said quoting Ansel Adams, "you don't take a photograph, you make it."

Using AI image generation and enhancement tools, Bob starts by either providing a reference image or telling the software with a text prompt what he would like to see, and it produces an array of image options. He can then select from the results and refine the concept with more instructions. He uses other image editing software to layer in additional details, adjust colors and make alterations. The results are beautiful, otherworldly and unique.

 

Mary Knapp began exploring glass as an art medium more than 20 years ago. She also explores and creates in other art mediums and has been juried into various shows. She creates items in fused glass ranging from large art pieces designed to enhance contemporary spaces to stunning, one-of-a-kind jewelry.

Mary spent 28 years in elementary art education and now teaches classes in fused glass jewelry for the Terravita Art League. Most recently Mary has created decorative glass pieces with custom stands for home décor.

 

---

 

Inside the Studios: A Look at Studios 11-14 on the 2025 Tour

By Anne Prine

Part 3 of 4

 

STUDIO 11 - Beth Lindsay

Beth has been a fixture at the Artists Studio Tour for a number of years. She also participates in numerous juried exhibitions in Colorado where she summers.

Beth sees life in shapes and colors, drawing endless inspiration from everyday encounters - whether in buildings, bodies, gardens, vistas or distant aerial views. Her work is characterized by vibrant abstractions that explore color, form and movement. Her paintings engage viewers with their spirited interplay of color and form.

Most recently, Beth has been exploring adding paper collage to her work, which was on display at the studio tour.

 

STUDIO 12 - Sheri Edsall

Sheri specializes in landscapes and still lifes in oil.

Describing the work pictured here, Sheri said, "The figure in that painting is my stepdaughter Elise, who was visiting us a few weeks ago from San Francisco.

The figure in the drawing on the table directly in front of her was a model from a Terravita Art League live model session recently. It's done in charcoal pencil. In the sketch book is a study in charcoal pencil for a landscape painting that Sheri is working on.

 

STUDIO 13 - Cheri Saffro

Cheri's work is all about pastel - from the color-wheel arrangement of her pastels to her finished pieces.

She said, "I am inspired by movement and places we've been or seen, such as hoop dancers or pow wows." Some pieces on display depicted Native American motifs.

The laundry on the clotheslines pictured here with her is a scene she remembered seeing at a house in their neighborhood in Illinois.

 

STUDIO 14 - Tina Bechtel

Tina Bechtel works primarily in ceramics and photography.

She is especially recognized for her charming and fanciful bird houses. Tina's photography includes stunning images of petroglyphs, rock formations and closeups of cacti and their flowers.

In describing her journey in art, she said, "At age 50 I decided to go back to school to study business. But I kept gravitating to the arts. I ended up curating and teaching art at the University of Wisconsin."

 

---

 

Inside the Studios: A Look at Studios 15-18 on the 2025 Tour

By Anne Prine

Part 4 of 4

 

STUDIO 15 - Barbara Garay

Barb Garay's pottery has often been seen on display at the Desert Pavilion as well as on the annual studio tour.

She said, "I like playing with various glazes to make new and exciting combinations. Making pottery is a constant learning experience."

Barb said the newest technique she is playing with is naked raku, "in which a vessel is taken out of a kiln fire while extremely hot (1400 degrees) and placed on a bed of straw and paper. The heat causes combustion, and once the vessel is engulfed by flames a cover is applied that smothers the flames. There are many steps to get to this final point. The final results can be unpredictable and exciting."

 

STUDIO 16 - Fern Medwin

Fern Medwin creates a wide range of unique pottery in many different styles and a variety of techniques. She is especially well known for her totems. The technique she's used most recently is called "foil saggar."

Saggar (SAY-ger) firing contains fumes in the kiln around a pot so that the pot picks up color in interesting and unpredictable abstract forms from the fumes.

 

STUDIO 17 - Wendy Wilson, Deb Weckesser

Wendy Wilson's focus this year leans toward wildlife and trees. Wendy was a music teacher for 25 years for students in third to eighth grades. She is also a National Mountain Bike coach and teaches and leads rides in the McDowell Sonoran Preserve. After coming to Arizona ten years ago, she fell in love with many styles of art.

Wendy teaches classes in torn paper collage.

Deb Weckesser takes a meditative approach to her art that expresses a feeling of the wholeness of the universe and humanity. She is influenced by aboriginal art, both in its storytelling and its use of circles and dots to express relationships.

"Working freehand with dots is a very slow and meditative process," she says.

 

STUDIO 18 - Michele Kelly

Michele works in a variety of mediums, most recently in alcohol inks on pieces she refers to as "smalls."

During the tour Michele was creating designs on tiles using ink drops. She also displayed a number of small paintings of fanciful birds, which she created by dropping ink on paper, seeing what it suggested and then strategically placing a few more drops.