It was as much about making connections as it was about art as residents and visitors alike came for the annual Pembina Valley Studio Tour this past weekend.
Photos by Lorne Stelmach/Voice
The showcase of the arts across the region marked its 20th year, and it again offered a good chance for artists to be able to show their work and the spaces where they create it.
There were both familiar faces and places and some new highlights for the self-guided tour, which included 20 possible stops overall across a wide region including locations in Emerson, Altona, Winkler, Morden, Carman, Miami, Darlingford, La Riviere and Pilot Mound.
“I would like to try to keep up with more things and ways to show my art,” said Jodi Rietze, who was jointly exhibiting in Winkler with her sister Marcy Penner.
“I live in the country, and I work from home, so I don’t share my stuff out in the world a lot … it’s just nice meeting people who have an appreciation for it,” said Penner. “Even if they walk out with nothing, just to know that they took the time to come and care about what you created, that’s huge.”
Both reflected on how they very much grew with doing art in the family blood, though Rietze had stopped doing art for awhile.
“I’ve always had it in my past, but the last seven years I’ve been painting almost every day … it just brings me joy, and I just paint whatever fits the mood,” she said. “There’s just so much that I feel I need to catch up on, like I’ve missed out on it.”
She started by following other artists and trying to do what they do, and she has done everything from abstract work to comic-style pieces.
“I go back and forth with what I like to paint … I still feel like I need to learn so much, so I keep trying new things over and over again. I haven’t been able to stick to one thing yet.”
It was Penner’s first time taking part in the tour.
“We’re four generations of artists in the family, though … my aunt was a painter as well, and she had been involved in it for many years,” she shared. “In some way, there was going to be some creative art thing for sure in my life.
“I’m newer to sharing my art,” she said. “We did a different, more of crafty type of tour last year. That was my first tour, but then I really wanted to get into more of an art tour.”
A veteran of the tour, Laverne Lovatt was again showing and selling his woodworking pieces in Morden.
“It’s an outreach thing. I think people know the work I do … sales of course are not number one, but it’s an important part of being on it. If I wasn’t selling anything, I wouldn’t be on it,” he suggested.
“It’s nice to meet people … a lot of it I think is about showing people what’s out there,” Lovatt said. “And sometimes people are returning, and they say I remember I was on the tour … do you have more of this or that?”
He has been getting more involved again now after having stepped away from the provincial woodturners association for a short time.
“I took a couple of years off, and I found that I missed it, so I rejoined again this year,” he noted. “It’s good to just have that dialogue with other people.”
“I had to get new work done … the kind of stuff that fits into handbags,” he said, noting how being on the tour gets him working at it. “After this is done, I have to look ahead … next spring I have a show at the Golden Prairie Arts Council too, so I want to get new work; things that I have wanted to do but aren’t that commercial work … pieces that I really want to do, and I don’t care if it doesn’t sell.”
Jennifer Smirl, who is director at the Pembina Hills Gallery in Morden, was also part of the tour for the first time, sharing her pottery workshop space near Thornhill with Susan Crawford-Young, a veteran of the studio tour.
“It’s a good chance to get to meet people … it’s great connecting with people and having people come to see you and where you’re working and how you work,” said Smirl. “And it helps a lot to be sharing the space.”
“We’re both pretty busy with things, so it was nice to share this space,” said Young.
She added “having an appreciation for art is all that you need to enjoy the tour … and I get to show my art work to people who are interested in art, people who are actually really interested in art come out to your studio and look at it … it’s nice to meet people.”
“It’s also a great incentive to get to work,” said Smirl. “You can create an environment for people to come into and to experience and see your work.”
Among the people taking in and enjoying the tour was Kristina Peters of Winkler.
“We like to go most years. We go and hang out for the day. You can meet some new people and see what they enjoy doing,” she said.
“There’s so many different styles and so many different ways to express through art … I’m always fascinated by it. I’m more of a musical person,” Peters said. “We’re not really artists, but we’re always fascinated by the different styles, and there’s so many options for art out there. It’s fun to see what people do and what’s happening locally.”
