28 artists and 10 locations make for largest Tour to date
“What art offers is space — a certain breathing room for the spirit.”
— J. Updike
The 2025 Hidden Studios Tour, scheduled for Friday, October 3, through Sunday, October 5, offers an excellent opportunity to view extraordinary artwork on a self-guided tour of working artists’ studios. And, like the annual seasonal color variations that are the backdrop for the Tour, it will be a one-of-a-kind experience, featuring work from 28 individual artists, at 10 different locations in Portage County.
Hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Friday and Saturday and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Sunday. A full description of Tour details, including artist biographies, working media, images, and in-studio demonstrations as well as maps to studio locations, is available at HiddenStudiosArtTour.com.
Regular and first-time Tour participants will have much to explore as this is the largest number of artists and studios ever featured. Several new artists and one new studio will make their first Tour appearances, while the evolution apparent in new work shown by veteran Tour artists will surprise at every stop.
The newest studio on the Tour, That Guy On J, features the metal sculptures of first-time host Jeremy Weber. His idiosyncratic creations, using a welder, various grinders, and an astonishing variety of scrap metal pieces, are “a menagerie of still life critters” filling up the Arnott location. They include a nine-foot-long green sea turtle, a massive dragon, life-size blue heron, and alligator and have been “traffic stoppers” in Arnott since 2019.
Buzz in Art Studios, another studio located in Arnott, is hosted by Jessie Fritsch. She works in the ancient technique of encaustic painting, using molten, pigmented beeswax on a wood subsurface. The difficult medium requires patience and spontaneity to produce the compositions of luminous color that she is known for. Much of her work focuses on pollinators and other natural subjects. Her guest artist is Carolina Niebres, a ceramics artist who specializes in producing functional fired clay pieces fashioned as platters, bowls, and vases. They are decorated with patterns and glazes inspired by nature and tribal tattoos, and often incorporate textures, all meant to reward regular use.
Further south is A Touch of Glass Studio, hosted by glass jeweler Tammy Rae Wolter. The studio occupies a converted church built in 1888 with the original stained-glass windows still intact. Her glasswork jewelry and art objects feature Borosilicate glass, a material known for spectacular colors and strength. Alternately melting and layering the glass creates shapes with great depth of color, which she combines with sterling silver, copper, and other materials in unique design combinations. She also creates handcrafted memorial glass keepsake objects, infusing cremation ash within the glass.
Wolter’s guest artists are photographers Randy and Lisa Lee and oil painter Jennifer Pichler. The Lees’ photography employs wax encaustic and editing techniques to give additional texture, depth, and interest to the natural images they favor as subjects. They then incorporate salvaged and reclaimed materials to not only frame the image but to form a one-of-a-kind cohesive art piece. Pichler focuses on creating mandala oil paintings that feature intricate and formal patterns, inspired by objects and colors observed in nature, that become an arrangement meant to evoke “glimmering moments in life.”
Red Sky Studio, jointly hosted by owners and artists Mary Lee and Gene Reineking, feature their two-dimensional pieces in a variety of mediums. Mary Lee employs acrylics, collage, and oil and cold wax to create a stunning variety of work that encompasses representational and abstract forms, lush colors, and a variety of textures and layers. The often whimsical and stylized pieces are created “in process,” without sketches or extensive planning. Gene works primarily in oils, using a palette knife to produce landscapes that are vigorous and dense with color, perhaps reflecting his considerable previous experience working in three-dimensional sculpture.
Their guest artist is Kathy King, a ceramicist who produces functional clay forms on a potter’s wheel and then embellishes them with human or animal characteristics to create a one-off form. She then paints, carves, and glazes each piece to incorporate an expressive visual story before firing the object.
Mike Jagielo, Tour host at the Wood Plane Studios near Almond, has been working in wood since 1983. Originally concentrating on stunning functional furniture and household pieces, he has expanded his oeuvre tremendously to include figurative and abstract pieces in a variety of local and exotic woods. He is also nationally known for his liturgical furniture and carving work.
Two guest artists, fabric artist Char TerBeest Kudla and jeweler Frank Kudla, will join Mike. Char, along with her sister Mariella, create hand-sewn, custom fabric bags and purses under the rubric Helen’s Daughters. Their designs feature striking tapestry and fabric elements in a variety of styles from casual to formal. Frank fashions rings, earrings, necklaces, and other jewelry pieces from an astonishing array of found materials in unexpected and brilliant combinations.
Five Tour studios are clustered in the northeast corner of Portage County, including Atelier Vermeil. Host Mark Brueggeman repurposed an old bank building in Nelsonville into a stained-glass studio space that eventually also became a workspace for fine artwork in other media, including drawing, painting, collage, printmaking, and book binding. That eclectic collection will be on view as well as the basketry of guest artist Elise Thornton who fashions distinctive baskets of all shapes and sizes from more than 10 species of willow, giving her a wide palette of texture and color to work with. She recently began to introduce new natural materials including barks, grasses, and roots into her work.
A repurposed barn just outside Nelsonville is the home studio of Brunett Thielking Art Studios. The hosts, Keven Brunett and Kirstin Thielking, will display their individual and collaborative sculptural works utilizing iron, glass, and paper elements. The small- and large-scale pieces combine these materials in surprising combinations and often employ kinetic movement and lighting elements.
Woodworker Joe Hoover and two-dimensional artist Nancy Thorson are guest artists. Hoover uses a wide assortment of woods to fashion exquisite furniture and storage pieces. Some examples reflect design traditions like Prairie and Danish modern, while others are more eclectic and contemporary. Thorson works in acrylics and mixed media to create colorful abstractions meant to evoke singular impressions for the viewer.
Sharon Fujimoto Glass Studio highlights her remarkable blown glass artistry produced using her on-site kiln and specialized tooling. Her award-winning designs are based on simplicity of form and color and embrace the “beautiful accidents” that give each piece a distinct and timeless quality.
In-studio guest artists are photographer Bill Lemke and jeweler Kim Wilson. Lemke’s stunning black and white images are created using traditional large format film cameras and wet darkroom developing techniques to print images on silver gelatin paper. He also produces archivally printed digital color pieces. Both methods display a nature-based focus but often include human figures to enrich that story. Wilson fashions earrings, necklaces, and bracelets using found and organic materials to develop a singular and striking central stone element into stunning one-off designs.
New Hope in Wood is the restored barn studio of Paul Klein, an artist working in stone, wood, and handmade paper to create brilliant sculptural lighting. Since 1999, Klein has fashioned table, floor, and custom lighting pieces that reflect the movement and flow he sees in nature to illuminate indoor spaces.
Three guest artists will also share the barn: quilter Kathleen Johnson, woodworker Dick Bemis, and watercolorist Mary Joe Fox. Johnson’s quilts are contemporary takes on traditional quilting patterns and methods utilizing vibrant colors and high-quality fabrics to produce unique, functional pieces. Bemis fabricates bowls and other functional items from wood burls hand turned from Wisconsin woods including birch, maple, and black ash. The watercolors of Fox begin with intricate pen-and-ink drawings to establish form and shadow and then employ multiple watercolor washes to develop hue and value to complete her subjects.
New Hope Art and Design, the home studio of watercolorist Jim McKnight, features representational landscape and figurative paintings combining the spontaneity and transparency of the watercolor medium, with an attention to detail that distinguishes the individuality of his work. His guest artist is Teresa Lind, who will display her cast metal sculptures. She works in bronze, aluminum, and iron, and her images often center on the dignity and pride of being female and feminine, while also engaged in the gritty reality and manual labor that casting metal requires.
The 2025 Tour is the 22nd continuous year and will set several milestones. It is a testament not only to the quality of the work on view but proof that the community recognizes and supports the positive cultural and financial impact made by artists in their lives. Since its start in 2004, HST has generated over $1 million in direct purchases to local artists and, with an average of more than 1,000 visitors each year, has directly benefitted local economies and Tour business sponsors.
In appreciation, Tour artists will again donate a percentage of sales back to a chosen local, non-profit charity, which is the Boys and Girls Club of Amherst this year.
Blown glass art from A Touch of Glass (left) and metallic sculpture from That Guy on J (right) are among the offerings in this year’s Hidden Studios Art Tour.
Paintings from such stops as Buzz in Art Studios are also in this year’s Tour.