Orange County Artists Guild’s annual studio tour celebrates 25th anniversary

Every year during the first two weekends of November, the members of the Orange County Artists Guild open their studios for the Open Studio Tour.

This year, which marks the tour’s 25th anniversary, 95 artists will be featured from all over Orange County.

“The Orange County Artists Guild encompasses the best artists in Orange County, whether it's the north or south part of the county including Hillsborough, Chapel Hill and Carrboro,” said Jason Smith, one of the artists who will participate in the tour.

He described his art as a mixture of abstract and Asian-inspired sculptures. To build his sculptures, Smith searches scrap yards for material.

“I like using reclaimed metal so I can kind of rescue things that may have been discarded and repurpose them into works of art,” Smith said.

Ann Hobgood also uses scrap materials to build her sculptures. She focuses on creating animals and human figures, while Smith works in the abstract.

When making her statues, Hobgood is inspired by pieces of scraps that she finds — when building her 7-foot-tall totem pole, Hobgood was inspired when she first got an old-fashioned coffee pot.

"They’re called percolators, the spout of it looked exactly like a nose, and I said, 'Oh, I’m going to make a figure with this as a head,'" Hobgood said.

Hobgood was previously a student at UNC, as was artist Thomas Stevens. Both Hobgood and Stevens studied art.

Stevens is an oil painter who has been an artist for several decades. His work is predominantly oil paintings, but also includes drawings, sculptures and prints.

Elaine O’Neil is a textile collage artist who will also be participating in the tour.

“Everything I do is created with fabrics, different colors and textures and some things," O'Neil said. "I dye print and dye paint and regular paint, wool and cotton and linen and silk and all kinds of different fabrics, so it’s kind of a layered scene of a place that we love. I do a lot of Chapel Hill scenes and Carolina and the beach and the mountains — so places where people emotionally connect in a happy way.”

O’Neil has also illustrated books, including "Road Trip Carolina, A Ride Across the Old North State."

Works by participating artists will also be on display at the Hillsborough Gallery of Arts and the FRANK Community Gallery.

The tour provides an opportunity to visit artists’ studios, learn about their processes and shop for art from a variety of mediums.

“This is a great opportunity to see really good art in your hometown and certainly the quality of the art is really high and represents a whole range of artistic mediums from jewelry-making and pottery to fine painting, sculpture, furniture-making — just a wide variety of art,” Stevens said.

arts@dailytarheel.com