Studio Crawl 2008: 36 Studios This Year

With the fall season officially underway, visual artists from all around the Fargo-Moorhead area are gearing up for this year’s Studio Crawl.
Since 2004, the Studio Crawl has offered a behind-the-scenes glimpse into the studios of some of the finest talent in the area.

This October 4 & 5, thirty-six artists will open their doors to the public, and display and discuss their latest work, some even performing demonstrations.
The free event gives the art fans from all around the community an opportunity to get to know the stories behind the artists and the art itself, as well as understand what kind of work goes into creating a new piece.

“The process is a bit complicated to explain here and I think I might put HPR readers to sleep trying to explain it,” says printmaker Eric Johnson. “Let’s just say the process is top secret and magic! I might explain to visitors of the Studio Crawl if asked nicely, wink wink.”

Johnson has been working almost exclusively with printmaking for the past eleven years. Having learned his craft from Kent Kapplinger, another Studio Crawl artist, Johnson describes his relationship with printmaking as an addiction.
This will be his fourth year participating in the Studio Crawl, and he looks forward to demonstrating his process to those who aren’t especially familiar with his medium of choice.

“Many people who have visited the studio in years past have commented that it’s a lot more work than they realized,” he explains.
“Depending on the size of the print, I spend several hours cutting and printing. When you take into account that some of my relief prints have thirty or more colors, they are very labor-intensive. I hope that by demonstrating and explaining the printmaking processes people are gaining an understanding of printmaking as an art form that they normally wouldn’t.”

Gin Templeton, who specializes in drawing and painting, and has recently been combining soft pastel with acrylic paint, agrees that the Studio Crawl gives the public a great opportunity to get a better grasp of what goes into a particular piece of artwork.

“Many people are not as familiar with pastel as with paint and the demonstrations help them to see how a painting is created from start to finish,” says Templeton, who has been painting seriously for the past fifteen years and will be showing off new work in this year’s Crawl, including abstracted landscapes.

Another painter returning to the Studio Crawl this year after taking a year off from it, is Paul Allen, a former Art major with 48 years of painting experience. Although always having had an urge to work on art projects as a kid, it wasn’t the career path he planned on going down.

“My major was Pre-Med up until an impromptu visit to The Chicago Art Institute where the artist in me stood up and said, ‘You’re an artist and you’re going to be painting pictures like this the rest of your life. You’d better change your class schedule’.”

He describes his style as a blend of expressionism and abstract impressionism, with hints of surrealism, and he’ll be featuring a new set of twenty-five pen and ink drawings called “Certainties and Enigmas.” He will also be displaying new oil canvases.

Karen Bakke has been painting for 39 years. Participating in the Studio Crawl since it was established, she has always loved seeing the people who come by her studio as well as showing her work to the public.

“The Crawl has been wonderful. With the help of some very proficient volunteers, and the support of community benefactors, this has turned into a grand event for art lovers, buyers and artists alike,” says Bakke. “Each year I feature something different to entertain visitors. This year I will be featuring my murals painted in various locations.”

Paint will certainly have a strong presence throughout the Crawl, with roughly half of the artists displaying their latest paintings, all in their own unique styles.
However, one medium that will not be as common is wood.

“I’ve been working with wood for many years and then discovered the wood lathe about six or seven years ago,” says Dale Cook, a passionate artist who will be participating in his second Crawl.

Cook will be demonstrating his techniques during the event, using a wood lathe to make bowls and vases from a plain piece of wood. He thinks of the Studio Crawl as a good experience for anyone interested in learning the process themselves.

“I think people will have a better understanding of the technique, tools, and many steps and time it takes to create a piece”, he says. “Hopefully it will inspire some of the people to experiment with the talents they have.”

This year’s Crawl also has a few newcomers on the roster, one of them being quilt artist Val Halvorson.

“Quilt art has become popular as fine art around the world, but often people hear the word quilt, and think of the burgundy and green bed quilts. I love to have people come to my studio and exclaim that they have never imagined quilts could look like this!”

Although quilting has been a part of Val’s life since she was a child, it wasn’t until 2003, when she was driving home and passed a van with the license plate “QUILTS,” that she started approaching the craft in a more serious way.

“It was like a burning bush for me, and I immediately went to a fabric store and purchased what I needed to make a quilt.”

After overflowing her home studio with quilts, she decided it was time to rent a space specifically dedicated to quilting to see what she could create on a full-time basis.

It was while attending last year’s Studio Crawl that she decided she wanted to participate in the event.

“I feel privileged to be included with the fabulous artists of the Fargo-Moorhead area,” says Halvorson.

People can also look forward to another new Crawl destination this year. Karman Rheault and Tara Argall’s “Blurred Visions” artwork uses a plasma cutter and an arc welder to create interesting and unique metal sculptures.

This is just a sampling of some of the extraordinary talent that Studio Crawl visitors will have an opportunity to observe and converse with.

Anyone interested in getting a sneak peek of what they can expect to see at various studios can find a Studio Crawl Preview Exhibit at the Plains Art Museum.

The exhibit runs through October 5 and features a piece of art from each participating artist.

If You Go

What: Studio Crawl
Where: Maps at Plains Art Museum.
When: Sat & Sun, Oct. 4-5, 12 to 6 p.m.
Info: 701.232.3821