“Buy local. Be local. Eat local.” Blacksburg’s local initiative has found its way onto bumper stickers, storefront windows and advertisements. But this weekend, it will expand to embrace a different concept: local art.
The New River Valley’s 3rd Annual Art Tour 10 takes the idea of purchasing goods from local merchants or farmers to the art world. It invites artists, students and community members alike to tour area galleries and studios while learning about the artists. The tour will feature the work of 11 local artists at 10 different locations in Floyd, Radford and Blacksburg.
The works featured on the tour will include stone carvings, photography, jewelry, paintings and pottery. The artists have found inspiration for their work from their own experiences and memories from travels, as well as the perpetual search to find beauty and meaning in their own surroundings.
Local sculptor Charlie Brouwer will be one of the artists featured on the tour. Though he has been a full-time artist for over 30 years, this is only his second year on the Art Tour 10. As an artist, Brouwer visits galleries and museums often to admire the work of others and found the idea of an art tour that lets viewers into the actual studio refreshing.
“It gives people access to artists in a way that’s different than viewing art in a gallery,” Brouwer said. “You get to meet the artists, see them work, talk to them. It’s an educational way to view art.”
Brouwer’s work will be displayed at his house in Floyd County, where viewers will have the chance to walk the grounds of his 9-acre backyard, exploring trails and paths lined with 20 of the artist’s sculptures. Brouwer’s wooden designs have an abstract, cubist feel, which emerges prominently from the familiar landscape of the New River Valley.
Brouwer will also display some of his work produced in collaboration with Jennifer Collins, another featured artist on the tour. Collins’ work features oil paintings of natural settings and has been combined with Brouwer’s sculptures to create unique pieces with a touch of surrealism. The artists have been a collaborative team since 1998, adding a professional aspect to their more personal, lifelong relationship as father and daughter.
Collins’s solo work as an artist features natural landscapes highlighted with an abstract feel. In her more recent work Collins has begun to incorporate human forms, partially from her teaching position in figure drawing classes at Tech. Collins also teaches principles of design through the School of Visual Arts and has encouraged her students to participate in the tour this weekend.
“Last year lots of my drawing students came,” Collins said. “It’s nice for them to get to see what professional artists in the community are doing because ultimately that’s what the students want to do. It’s a good opportunity to ask questions and to see how it all works.”
Collins and her work will be featured at her own gallery in Radford. For the most part during the tour, she will likely be found painting in her studio in the back where she hopes to show onlookers how one of her pieces comes together.
“More than anything, I look forward to meeting people and talking about what I love to do,” Collins said of the event.
Fellow local artist Darcy Meeker, a first-time participant in the Art Tour 10, shares in Collin’s enthusiasm in terms of interacting with the community. Meeker’s portfolio boasts a variety of works from copper sculptures and stone carvings to mixed-media collages, all concentrating on aspects of texture and light.
Meeker feels the tour offers a unique opportunity to show her love of art to the community.
“I love experiencing people experience my work — it’s a magical thing when something from my subconscious and my heart makes someone else feel something,” Meeker said.
On Saturday and Sunday Meeker will be at her home and studio in Blacksburg, a space that also works as a gallery, featuring a lifetime of her sculptures and paintings. In addition, Meeker founded a stone-carving group in Blacksburg that uses her yard as a creative space. The group that she referred to as “the backyard carvers” will also be working and exhibiting this weekend.
Art Tour 10 offers an opportunity for community members to not only view a variety of local art, but also to connect with the artists and experience their work from a more personal perspective. Looking forward to the event, Brouwer reflected on this opportunity to be invited into the very personal atmosphere of an artist’s creative space and sharing their energy.
“Seeing an artist’s studio and learning more about how they work can deepen the relationship between the artist and viewer,” Brouwer explained. “When I am invited into someone’s home I discover more of who they really are — when you see something of the processes of making the art you begin to understand what it really is and appreciate it more.”