More than two dozen San Benito artists will be participating in the 2013 Open Studios Tour from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday with stops in Hollister, Aromas, and San Juan Bautista.
This year will feature three new artists who will be participating for the first time, including Chenoa Grace Warner. Warner is a recent graduate from the San Francisco Art Academy and has had pieces on display in the city.
Other new artists include Heather Simpson-Bluhm, who lives downtown and works with 3-D mixed media, and Maureen Serafini, an oil painter who will show at one of the group sites featured this year. For the first time, artists from Ridgemark will be participating in the show.
“I have actually attended (the Open Studios) quite a few years back,” Warner said. “I live right on San Benito Street, so it’s very convenient.”
Warner said she will be setting up an easel in her living room and kitchen so visitors can see her working on a painting when they visit. She will also have completed paintings along with what she calls quick study drawings to show parts of the process.
“I think it will be exciting for the community to get to experience what artists do,” she said.
Warner, who teaches at the SF Academy of Arts part time, is also teaching classes to pre-teens and teens at the Blak Sage Gallery once a week.
“I have a lot of friends with kids that are artistic who said they have no place to take them,” she said.
She talked with Jennifer Laine, executive director of the San Benito Arts Council, about using the space for lessons.
“We discussed how it would be mutually beneficial to have more young people exposed and have a place to practice,” she said.
On a recent afternoon she discussed how she got into art herself and the types of techniques she teaches her students.
She said she had been working as a retail manager, raising three children, when she decided to take classes at Cabrillo College and San Jose State University. Once she started taking classes, she thought she wanted to pursue something in art such as illustration. When she enrolled in a painting class, she realized fine art was her true passion.
“For one of the prerequisites I took still life,” she said. “It was amazing. Within the first week I changed my major to fine art. As soon as I tried it, it clicked for me.”
Warner is passing that same passion on to her students with the lessons she offers for kids 9-12 and 12-18. The cost of the class is $125 per four-week period for two hours a week (email [email protected] for more information.) She starts the kids out on basic principles with a final assignment of drawing a portrait of a family member. On a recent week she was teaching students how to draw a sphere and how that technique can be translated into drawing features such as eyes.
She said she was looking forward to the chance to interact with visitors during the Open Studios Tour.
“I hope people come,” she said. “Sometimes people don’t know we have a lot more artists.”
This year’s tour will include two group locations with multiple artists showing at the Blak Sage Gallery, in Hollister, and the soon to be opened Aimee June Winery in San Juan Bautista. Carole Belliveau and Serafini will show at the Blak Sage Gallery. Meg Kaminski and Katherine Stutz-Taylor will be showing their pieces at Aimee June Winery, at 106 Third St., in San Juan.
Gery Peterson, one of the founders of Aimee June, said they started participating in the Open Studios a few years ago as a winery that had an art theme. When he began bottling wine on School Road in San Juan Bautista, he said he used his daughter’s artwork for the labels, with each variety and vintage having a unique image. He said he started out using his daughter’s artwork from when she was 10 or 11, but now that she is in college he has less of her work from which to choose. Ashley Peterson, his daughter, still paints with acrylic, watercolors or does pencil sketches in the summer when she is on break from school.
Peterson was putting the finishing touches on the downtown San Juan tasting room leading up to the Open Studios Tour.
“One of the concerns past visitors had at the School Road location is it is on a steep slope and parking is not very good,” Peterson said. “If you are turning around, the vehicle slips and slides.”
Cetani Vineyards, of Hollister, will also be participating this year in the tour.
“I’m mostly looking forward to an opportunity to see the success of pairing artists with wine,” Peterson said. “If that is successful, I hope to do more of it with the Arts Council. I’d really like to set up some art and wine events throughout the year.”
Open Studios Tour
The San Benito Arts Council will host the 2013 Open Studios Tour on Saturday and Sunday, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., with 27 participating artists and two wineries. Admission is free and a map of the tour listing all participating locations can be downloaded online at http://sanbenitoarts.org/.
