MAC Holiday Artist Studio Tour brings artists, art fans together

For more than 100 years, the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture has been a hub for, well, arts and culture. Through exhibitions, events and educational opportunities, the museum has put the spotlight on artists and ideas that connect to the Inland Northwest.

The national and international artists on display in the museum are a treat to see, but while those exhibits come and go, art patrons can rely on local artists to continuously make work around the region.

Since 1987, the MAC has offered a program called Art Source, which allows art patrons to rent and buy works from regional artists. About a decade ago, the museum team wanted to increase the support and exposure they were giving to local artists by taking things out of the museum and into the studios.

The MAC Holiday Artist Studio Tour invites attendees to meet local artists in their own studio spaces, closing the gap between artists and those who purchase art. This year’s tour runs from 9:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. on Saturday. Following the tour, the artists and attendees are invited to Barrister Winery to continue mingling.

Carol Summers, who works in advertising and media relations at the MAC, has been involved with the art tour since the very beginning. Summers sees the tour, now in its ninth year, as a win-win for artists and art patrons.

“We have great contacts with artists, so we were able to put together an eclectic mix of different types of artists,” she said. “Then, of course, we have a large audience that we can reach to help the artists develop their followers.”

This year’s tour takes art lovers to the studios of Christy Branson, who works with encaustic and ceramics; ceramicist Alex Dayne; painter Dylan Lipsker; mixed media artist Andrew Parker; fiber artist Barbara Safranek; painter Deb Sheldon; and letterpress artist Emma Sheldon.

This is Deb Sheldon’s first time participating in the MAC Holiday Artist Studio Tour, something made more special by the fact that her daughter Emma is participating as well.

Deb Sheldon likes to say that while her daughter grew up in an artistic home with a painter and a sculptor for parents, she herself did not. Her family was supportive of her artistic endeavors though, even allowing her to paint murals on her bedroom wall.

“It was always going to be art for me,” she said. “My first drawing, I said ‘I want to be an artist,’ and it was a little stick finger painting on an easel. There’s never been anything else I wanted to do.”

And though she’s dabbled in photography and sculpture before, painting is her main form of expression, with thoughts and even dreams often coming in the form of paintings.

There was a time when Deb Sheldon stepped away from the canvas for about 15 years to start and run her own business, 29th Avenue Artworks. As soon as she found a window to create again, she picked up her brushes and has been working creatively ever since.

Though that 15-year break might seem like a setback, Deb Sheldon looks back on it as an education of sorts.

“My eyes were constantly taking in information,” she said. “Every time I designed a project for a person, I had to sort through color, so my eyes were getting smart about color. There was so much of that, that I really look back on and I think ‘What an awesome training ground that was.’ “

Deb Sheldon closed 29th Avenue Artworks four years ago after her husband passed away, and she’s been painting full time since.

Deb Sheldon sees the paintings she creates as a means of building people up. Sheldon recalls selling a couple paintings to a woman over the summer then running into that same woman the following spring. Winter, the woman told Sheldon, had been difficult, but the bright colors in her painting helped her get through the season.

Every stage of life is full of inspiration, Deb Sheldon said, whether she realized that at the time. The stress of owning a business, recessions, balancing work and parenthood, the loss of her husband – it all has the potential to make its way into paintings.

One series Deb Sheldon created was called “Storytellers,” in which each piece had a story, thought or theme to it. The first was inspired by the quote attributed to Martin Luther: “You cannot keep birds from flying over your head, but you can keep them from building a nest in your hair.”

“I feel like now I’m able to take some of the experiences I went through that at the time were so sharp and jagged, and now they’re a little smoother, and I can understand them better, hopefully, and then share them with other people,” she said.

The MAC Holiday Artist Studio Tour will give Deb Sheldon the opportunity to share her work and the stories behind each piece with a steady stream of art patrons. Summers said the art tour is a popular event with the museum’s audience because it gives them a chance to see where the artists work.

Some artists work in a formal studio, others in a separate space next to their home, others still make space where they can at the kitchen table or in a spare room.

“People love to go see where somebody works or lives, that sense of curiosity and getting to visit with the artists,” she said. “It’s really interesting. It’s something a little different than going to the museum.”