Philomath Open Studios Tour lets public get a taste of creative spaces

PHILOMATH - Seven is the magic number for the annual Philomath Open Studios Art Tour & Sale as seven Philomath art studios featuring eight local artists and seven guest artists open for the public Oct. 12-13.

Each year, visitors get to peek into the inner workings of local art studios and glimpse the personal and professional spaces of some of the area's most talented potters, painters, fabric artists and craftspeople. This year, the featured artists are Laura Berman, Katheryn Byram, Dale Donovan, Babette Grunwald, Lee Kitzman, Judith Sander, Debby Sundbaum-Sommers and Harold Wood.

Judith Sander is opening Sage Studio, her personal workspace on Oak Lane, to visitors for the sixth time. Sander works in mixed media collage, as well as creating art dolls.

Her collages include oil pastels, acrylics and pencil, and often incorporate phrases that hold special magic or power to her. The art dolls often provide an artistic escape.

"It's a fun thing for me to do in between projects," Sander said. "It takes me away from the seriousness of collage work."

The dolls are often fantastically dressed, something that harkens back to Sander's days as a young girl, sewing up doll clothes. Beautiful hats, dresses, shoes and a lot of bead work make the dolls stand out as pieces of art.

Sander was 10 when she started sewing.

"The neighbor down the street taught me," she recalled. "We had a really old sewing machine. It was electric, but barely."

The dolls, which are made of muslin, often have words written on them as well, usually peeking through the costumes.

"It's telling the story about the doll's character," she said.

Babette Grunwald learned to love working with fabric when she watched her Swiss grandmother do needlepoint, and during her schooling in Switzerland, she spent a lot of time doing handiwork. But when Grunwald, whose father was American, moved to the United States with her husband in 1991, she found that although she was technically an American citizen, she knew very little about the country.

She decided to immerse herself in a very American form of artwork, quilting.

"I really liked the history" of quilting, she said. "The designs have symbolic and historic meaning."

Grunwald eventually became a more advanced fabric artist, taking classes from experts in the art quilt movement. After living in Mexico near Toluca for four years, and teaching quilting there, Grunwald returned to the states and worked as an artist, showing at national galleries, before deciding that she wanted to go back to school and expand her knowledge of art.

She has just received an MFA from the University of Oregon, and her graduate project was a series of fabric art pieces based on global warming and environmental issues. She has been living in Philomath for three years, and has participated in the Open Studios since she arrived, first as a guest artist, and now with her own studio.

Although visitors to her studio will be able to view some of Grunwald's more intricate work, she will be offering smaller gift pieces for sale, including notebooks, scarves and fiber bowls.

To get a map, go to http://www.philomathopenstudios.com or call 929-5625. To view Sander's work, go to www.judithsander.com.

To view Grunwald's work, go to http://www.babettestudio.com.