South Coast Artists open more than 75 local artists’ studios to the public

WBUR | August 20, 2024

The South Coast of Massachusetts is known for its rich maritime history, picturesque beaches and fresh lobster rolls. But out-of-towners may not realize the area is also an art hub where all types of creatives, from sculptors to photographers, live and work.

The nonprofit South Coast Artists held its 21st annual Open Studios Tour this summer, showcasing artists from Dartmouth and Westport in Massachusetts, and Tiverton and Little Compton in Rhode Island. More than 75 local artists opened up their studios to patrons for two weekends: July 20 and 21 and Aug. 17 and 18. Around 15,000 studio visits took place last summer, and artist Lindsey Epstein said herself and many other artists rely on the tour for a significant portion of their income.

Ceramicist Cali Almy presented work from her home studio in Westport. She shares the home with her husband, Whitmore Boogaerts, a sculptor also on the tour. Her studio is calm and organized, with bright windows looking out onto green fields — her neighbor’s cows are currently stationed there to trim her grass. Inside, she keeps shelves of vases in various firing stages, cabinets filled with curiosities to spark her creativity and arrangements of leaf patterned tiles that convey the intricate world of her designs.

Almy — who has been a part of the tour for three years — works with alternative firing methods: soda kiln, raku kiln and pit firing. These techniques allow for metallic-looking finishes, smoky colorways and an exciting lack of predictability.

“I’m very intent on making precise forms,” Almy said. “But what I really love to explore is surface, going kind of crazy with playing with glazes, playing with layering, and then playing with different firing techniques to get different results on these fairly consistent and uniform surfaces. I kind of love it when the glaze does something really unexpected and different.”

Cali’s cousin Gretchen Almy exhibited work in a garage across a nearby field — the Almy family has owned the land both houses sit on since the 1740s. She’s also an artist but works with oil paint and graphite. Gretchen Almy has been a professional painter for more than 25 years and used to be an equestrian. Fascinated by horses, she began prominently featuring the animals in her work.

She renders her equine subjects in bold lines and unusual color combinations, leaving sweeping strokes and dripping colors across the canvas. She looks to abstract expressionists like Joan Mitchell and Richard Diebenkorn for inspiration.

“I like the energy in their brush strokes, the colors they used, and that’s what I’d like to be doing more of,” she said. “You can kind of see, when looking at [my] work, it’s not a specific style per se yet. I’m kind of playing and experimenting, because I finally have a chance to do some of that.”

In Tiverton, Epstein creates pottery in the studio she has worked at for nine years — she started throwing on a wheel in high school. Epstein has also taken in a sleepy black cat named Will Ferrell, who showed up years ago on her front porch and never left.

Epstein loves color, organizing her work in rainbow order and offering a large table full of rainbow pottery. She works with the crystalline glaze process, which results in one-of-a-kind, floating bursts of color.

“I started crystalline back in 2005 when I was in college. When I was in high school, I had asked my teacher if I could do it, and she said, ‘No, we don’t have the right stuff. You can’t do it.’ And then when I went to college, I asked the teacher, ‘Hey, can I do this?’ She said, ‘No.’ I just kept asking over and over again. And finally she said, ‘Sure, but if you break the kiln, you have to buy a new one,’” Epstein said. “So I did break the kiln.”

Epstein wanted to be a veterinarian, even going so far as to earn a degree in animal science. After graduating, she wasn’t sure which path to follow, art or animal medicine. People were buying her pottery, so she decided to chase that passion. Epstein has been working on her art in the 20 years since.

She used to work in her pottery studio with her beloved dog Charlie until he passed away in February.

“We did everything together. He was my studio assistant. He was my gardener, so we would often lay out in the gardens, and there was the tulips and the dahlias, and we would spend a lot of time together,” she said.

In his honor, she developed a flower show exhibit at the Attleboro Arts Museum this spring called “Charlie’s Tulips” where flower-like vases, their bodies pinched and curved to evoke tulip petals, sat in between rows of real tulips in a raised planter.

Also drawing from flowers and nature, Meredith Brower photographs found natural objects organized in eye-catching, symmetrical mandalas. She walks through her home in Tiverton and along local beaches and paths, collecting items like flower petals and seashells to form vibrant arrangements. Then, she snaps photos and tosses the materials into her backyard, thanking them for their part in her art.

Bower grew up in Tiverton and returned to her parents’ house years later to care for her 92-year-old mother, turning an old, dusty barn into a lively studio. Her late father, who painted and illustrated as a hobby, continues to guide her artistic journey.

“Sometimes I’ll go out with an intention, like I want to use the antlers, so I look for specific pieces that will fit,” she said. “Other times, I don’t even know I’m going to do it, and then I feel like it’s my father throwing stuff in front of me, and [I’m] like, ‘OK, I guess I’ll start there.’ ”

Hours before visitors arrived at her studio, ceramicist Cali Almy expressed how much she appreciates being a part of the South Coast Artists community.

“To be in this area with so many other artists, it’s just really a remarkable thing that we didn’t really fully realize in coming here,” she said. “To be able to support that, and be involved in that, is an incredible gift.”