Somerset Open Studios 2021
Somerset Open Studios is back and is the perfect opportunity to discover some of Somerset’s finest artists and makers, across 205 venues.
This year’s festival, runs until Sunday 3rd October, and sees 13 artists open their studios to the public as well as one specially-curated exhibition available online.
Alex Howell Art
Venue 118: 89 Nunney Road, BA11 4LF
Open 10am-5pm
Alex’s atmospheric land and seascapes explore the ever changing but always inspiring natural world.
Jane Sheppard Ceramics
Venue 116: 146 The Butts, BA11 4AG
Open 10am-5pm weekends only
Finely coiled, burnished and smoke-fired large vessels and sculptural forms mixing ancient and modern.
Art at 5 Gurnville Cottages
Venue 115: 5 Gurnville Cottages, Little Keyford Lane, BA11 5BD
Open 10am-5pm
Showcasing the work of three contrasting artists, Sarah Truscott, Viv Meadows and Kate Cochrane.
Sarah weaves scarves, rugs and wall hangings, drawing on her inspiration from colour.
Emerging in her ‘Middle Ages’, Viv’s drawing, printing and collage looks under the surface.
Kate’s colourist paintings explore landscapes, castle ruins, and the richness of traditional myths.
Clive Walley
Venue 114: 16 Keyford Gardens, BA11 1JY
Open 11am-5pm (closed 1st-3rd October)
All the recent Birches in Mist diptych paintings and Quadrat, a photographic extension based on one of them.
Sally Muir at The Old Printworks
Sally Muir presents a series of works on paper which respond to poets and poems, acknowledging the history of the Old Printworks site. The specially-curated exhibition in the Acorn show home at The Old Printworks is available online only, see link below.
During lock down and inspired by an online class Sally Muir started working on a series of paintings, drawings and prints, responding to contemporary poetry. She has always been interested in the crossover between language and image, how to take the feeling that a poem evokes and try and translate it into something visual, keeping the spirit of the original, while at the same time not simply illustrating it.
Working in a mixture of oil, charcoal, gouache, pastel, inks, and watercolour, these are experimental, she is trying to find a new way of working combining what words convey, with colour and images. View the online exhibition.
Alexandra Brown
Venue 110: Studio 20, Silk Mill Studios, BA11 1PT
Open 10am-5pm (closed Friday 1st)
Paintings in celebration of the natural world: flowers, birds, leopards. Painted in oil and distressed copper-leaf. Cards and prints available.
Dan Morley
Venue 111: Studio 18, Silk Mill Studios, BA11 1PT
Open 10am-5pm
Small paintings, mezzotints and sculpture exploring little objects through realism.
Lynn Keddie
Venue 112: Studio 10, Silk Mill Studios, BA11 1PT
Open 10am-5pm
Expressing the essence of our landscape and of flowers. Painting from memory each mark and colour placed to capture elements of a place in the changing seasons or the ephemeral beauty of a flower.
Abigail Reed
Venue 113: Studio 11, Silk Mill Studios, BA11 1PT
Open 10am-4pm Saturday (appointments only at all other times)
Charcoal on paper drawings of landscapes. Desolate abandoned quarries filled with silver birch trees to the vast forests that surround Frome.
David R Abram
Venue 108: Studio 9, Silk Mill Studios, BA11 1PT
Open 10am-5pm
Aerial views of prehistoric monuments, taken in low light using a drone. Some large prints on show; smaller ones for sale.
Miguel Ornia-Blanco
Venue 109: Studio 2, Silk Mill Studios, BA11 1PT
Open 10am-5pm (Thur-Sat) 10.30am-4pm (Sun)
“Working on canvas painting in oil primarily, I paint urban and natural landscapes. I try and capture those inner feelings these spaces give me.”
Amanda Bee
Venue 107: Studio 14, Silk Mill Studios, BA11 1PT
Open 10am-5pm (closed Sunday)
“Mixed Media abstracted landscapes focussing on Somerset, Wiltshire and Cornwall. My work is a bold, sensitive and personal response to place.”
To find out more about Somerset Open Studios visit the Somerset Art Works website.
