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Participating Artists
Each year, we provide a brief description of each artist's work and links to their websites. Most of our participating artists have been exhibiting
since our inception, 22 years ago, and others have joined more recently.
Our goal is to have people visit our studios and see art where it is created. We encourage each visitor to sign up to our email and mailing lists, as we
expand our communication beyond once a year studio visits. Each artist offers work for sale or for order.
If you are not comfortable with an "open studio" environment and will not visit this year, please enjoy our Virtual Tour produced by John Femino, one of our members.
Want to be notified of future events? Click Here
Interested in being a participating artist for 2023 Artist Open Studios? Click Here
This year, Artist Open Studios features eight wonderful artists in the Northern RI area. Each is looking forward to sharing their craft with you. 2022 Mailer with Map
Our Featured Artists for 2022 are:
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John Femino 21A Plainfield Pike Foster, RI
02825 401.595.8635 feminophoto@gmail.com
Fine art photography
John Femino attended the undergraduate photography program at RISD, while he was an exchange student at Brown pursuing his medical degree.
Highly influenced by his mentor, world re-knowned photographer Harry Callahan, he continued working in fine art landscape and abstract photography, mastering the technical aspects of
black and white and color developing and printing. He works in multiple analog and digital formats, printing onto archival pigment based fine art papers and canvas and displays in wooden
frames made in his shop. His subject matter is local to RI, often involving images from the farm and of his horses and beaver dams. He produces a yearly calendar of photos documenting the
visual variety of Foster as well as printing mural sized panoramas. Currently, he is working on a series of local landscapes utilizing perspective distortion inherent in manually
processed multiple image panoramas.
John is a member of RI Center for Photographic Arts, and has had numerous group and individual shows, with a permanent collection at Meadows
Edge Recovery Center. His workspaces are in his historic restored barn and farmhouse, and include a framing workshop and photo studio overlooking his horse pastures.
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Valery Nardacci 26 Samuel Stone Road North
Scituate, RI 02857 401.338.1636 info@valerygallery.com www.valerygallery.com
Observational paintings
Valery Nardacci grew up in Scituate and continues to draw inspiration from her rural upbringing. After completing her Bachelors in
Art Education and beginning her teaching career, Valery studied the figure to earn her MFA at UMass Dartmouth. Along with oil painting, she explores gouache painting, gesture drawing, and
printmaking. Valery is currently focused on still-life paintings of natural objects, many of which are gathered from her own gardens. She approaches painting openly, with a goal of
capturing the essence of what is observed. Through this fluid process, the contrast and nuances of inventive color schemes emerge as Valery balances representation with abstract
impressionistic qualities.
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Neal Drobnis 102 Pole Bridge Road North Scituate,
RI 02857 401.678.6464 ndrobnis@verizon.net www.casteglass.com
Blown glass art for home and garden
Neal is drawn to the glass medium because the fluidity makes it an expressionist art form, transparency brings the colors to life,
and the contrasts between textures enhances the perception of rough and smooth surfaces. These are the qualities he feels within his being and the artistic process is the way to share his
appreciation of the human drama of this our short time on earth. Neal received his MFA from Rhode Island School of Design and a BFA from Massachusetts College of Art. His work is present
in numerous public and private collections and is shown in galleries worldwide.
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Tom Grabbert 380 Seven Mile Road Hope
(Scituate), RI 02831 401.821.5238 grabbertt@aol.com
Functional, decorative, high fire porcelain
Tom Grabbert is a ceramic artist who creates elegant porcelain tableware and decorative items in a studio overlooking beautiful
farmland in Hope, a village in Scituate, RI. He began working with clay at the age of 15. For the past 30 years, Tom has developed a unique palette of natural, rich-toned glazes that
complement the forms of his work -- a complete line of tableware, vases, and other vessels -- and suggest both movement and tranquility. Tom studied at Rhode Island School of Design.
Locally he exhibits at the popular RISD alumni sales, and his studio in Hope, RI.
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Ed Andrews 14 Eddy Road Chepachet, RI
02814 401.742.7671 www.EdAndrewsArtist.com
Metal sculptures and paintings
Ed Andrews will be exhibiting new work from his Transplant series. The work features polychrome wall sculptures constructed from
perforated bronze, aluminum, and stainless steel. Andrews begins by cutting metal sheets into intricate geometric and organic shapes and applying hand-painted or acid-etched complex
patterning in a bold palette. He then stacks the layers together, creating an effect of oscillation through the juxtaposition of shapes and color combinations. Ranging in diameter from 16
to 40 inches, the works are each approximately 1 ½" thick. Floating on the supporting wall, the works gain further depth as they cast complicated shadows.
Ed Andrews is an artist from Emporia, Kansas who moved to New England in 1990. He received his BFA in Sculpture from the Kansas City Art
Institute and his MFA in Sculpture from Indiana University. Ed Andrews is a recently retired professor from Northeastern University in Boston. Ed Andrews has received grants
and awards for his work from the Massachusetts Artists fellowship, NEA Visual Artists fellowship and the M-AAA NEA fellowship.
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Ann Rozhon 88 Old Quarry Road Harmony (Glocester),
RI 02857 401.241.7725 annrozhon@gmail.com www.annrozhon.com
Paintings and sculpture
Ann has been a professional artist for over 25 years. She graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design and has since had both
group and solo shows throughout New England. Her work is included in many private and corporate collections in the United States and Canada, and is also represented in the books,
"American Artists-An Illustrated Survey of Leading Contemporaries" and "Contemporary American Women Sculptors", as well as having been reviewed many times in The Providence Journal,
Artscope magazine, The New Paper, and U.R.I. Magazine. It was the subject of two feature articles in the Observer. Ann was commissioned by The Marriot Corporation to create a sculptural
frieze for Women and Infants Hospital and has worked restoring architectural sculpture for building facades and as an assistant exhibit designer at Roger Williams Park Zoo.
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Kristin S. Street 110 Old Plainfield Pike Foster,
RI 02825 401.378.8212 kristinsstreet@gmail.com www.kristinstreet.com
Abstract, drawing, painting, sculpture.
Kristin S. Street earned a BFA in Textiles from Rhode Island School of Design and a MFA in Studio Art / Sculpture from Maryland
Institute College of Art. She has exhibited widely locally, on the national stage and internationally. In addition to being an exhibiting artist, Kristin has taught in colleges,
secondary schools and through private lessons to students ages four to seventy-four for over forty years. Living among the pines in Foster, RI, in the western part of the state, her
studio makes you feel like you're among the treetops. Despite working within Nature, most of Street's work falls into the realm of abstraction and utilizes materials both industrial and
organic. Whether working with metals, fabrics, pencil or paints, her work uses repetition and mark-making as a fundamental component in her pieces to explore texture, line and
space.
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Earle Thurber 228 Ide Road North Scituate, RI
02857 401.647.7214 www.thurberstudio.com
Paintings and prints
Earle Thurber's paintings grow from a lifelong fascination with art, psychology, design, and in many ways are an integration of
all three areas of interest. Earle's technique is highly process oriented, a discovery process through which he is drawn by color associations, relationships of forms that evolve, and a
building sense of complexity of visual interaction. The work is constructed of layers of color and form, "free associations" that are subsequently refined through a more
conscious design process. His work is heavily influenced, and frequently totally driven, by music, from a wide range of interest, but especially jazz. Earle frequently thinks of the work
as the visual equivalent of jazz improvisation.
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