Behind the Studio Doors of the 33rd Chatham Artists Tour: Meeting Four Artists

ARTS & CULTURE

Last Thursday’s Cold Moon—the final supermoon of the year, long associated with the onset of deep winter—delivered on its promise on Saturday with a gray sky and frigid temperatures, as art lovers visited artist studios during Chatham County’s annual tour, which takes place on the first two weekends of December each year.

It was the perfect neutral backdrop for exploring a world of color, form, and artistic vibrancy.

This year’s tour, featuring members of the Chatham Artists Guild, showcases 59 artists in 41 studios. A detailed brochure and map are available at this link.

The Local Reporter enjoyed visits with four artists.

All photos and composites by Pamir Kiciman

#27 Steevie Jane Parks and Julio Alberdi (shared studio, first weekend only)

As you step inside, the winter monochrome lifts in Steevie Jane Parks’ colorful canvases. She prefers to paint large, layered squares filled with movement and a lively palette.

“I think about color all the time, I dream about color. When I wake up, I paint whatever I dreamed about. It’s my therapy.”

Her abstract paintings are also fairly geometric. Parks retired from clinical psychology. On breaks, she’d make digital art on her computer. That morphed into her current visual language.

She realized she’s drawn to the process of mainly arranging triangles and letting them slowly build into a unified form, with color carrying the emotional tone.

“If I’m not in a good mood, I paint, and I’m in a good mood. It’s transforming my own emotion, and hoping that that positive emotion will show through and somebody will react to it.”

Parks often begins with an acrylic wash underneath, sometimes using rollers, and then she shines it up and refines it with oils. She likes the texture of oils, and many are made without acrylic paint.

Her minor works explore collage with fabric or paper.

The studio belongs to Julio Alberdi, and he shares it with Parks, a common arrangement among artists.

His large, rounded wooden sculptures are dark, rich, and grounded.

The work table in Alberdi’s main workspace, warmed by a wood stove, is hard to miss: A hefty vise holding down a work in progress, a chainsaw now idle, scattered wood chips and sawdust.

Alberdi still has his first carving, from around age seven, after his father told him to grab a chisel and a mallet.

His father, the renowned artist and arts educator Joxe Manuel Alberdi, continued to train him in the years that followed.

Now, in his own studio, Alberdi works with many of the same tools his father once used.

“I like people to touch them,” he said regarding the smooth, inviting, rotund carvings, often made in his favorite black walnut.

“It feels good to me. It’s a comfort, a heart-type, it’s the soul I think I prefer.”

Alberdi incorporates other materials in his wooden pieces, such as shellstone from Texas and Virginia soapstone. The first reveals more and more shells as you cut and shape it; the second is easy to shape but ends up as weighty pieces since soapstone is soft but dense.

#33 Ruth Parks

This artist has a veritable showroom for her varied creations. She works across mediums, but her latest venture is a process with gingko leaves from her neighbor.

“I saw the leaves and said, Wow, I want to conserve them.”

The leaves are soaked in water with glycerin, which preserves them and adds flexibility and softness. In her first creation, Parks sewed the coated leaves onto canvas, resulting in a delicate nature scene with a tree and a moon.

“I work with anything that will express what I want. My work is feelings. It’s not names. It’s not words.”

Parks’ soft sculptures are an intriguing line in her work. “I always try something new,” she said when asked how she began making them. She utilizes wires and fabrics to fashion them.

Fabrics appear as quilted figures and textured surfaces in some of her larger framed pieces. She also works in fabric-based art that incorporates intricate beading, stitching, and sequins.

Her years in Japan influence her aesthetic. She draws on stories or sits in quiet reflection to let ideas emerge.

“My art is my voice. When I don’t have words, I have my art.”

#34 Irena Cepulyte

Having no idea how prevalent clay is in North Carolina before moving to the area, Cepulyte was taken by a friend to Clayworx Studios and given a ball of clay—a “life synchronicity,” as she described it.

“I never thought I’d end up in ceramics. But the natural environment here inspired me so much,” she related.

“I always collected things from forests. It hit me that I can mix rocks, bones, and flowers with ceramics.”

There’s a harmonious connection between the feminine forms Cepulyte handbuilds and the natural materials she adorns them with.

She feels her creations flow organically without an agenda, and she follows the flow.

Whether it’s goddess-like, larger pieces, or smaller decorative wall pieces, Cepulyte’s work is immediately attractive and meaningful. She notes that she rarely knows what will emerge when she begins working.

“Sometimes I’m surprised myself where it came from.”

Sourcing materials around Jordan Lake and an intuitive approach give her works both a timelessness and familiarity.

“I feel aligned and resonating with where I am,” she concluded while acknowledging that her whole life has led her to this point.

Pamir Kiciman is an artist who writes about a range of the arts and the creative process. This reporter can be reached at: Information@TheLocalReporter.press.