Artists will take visitors inside their process during the South Sound Studio Tour

Molly Gilmore
·4 min read

The free South Sound Studio Tour, happening Saturday and Sunday, April 20 and 21, offers a chance to peek inside the studios — and the creative processes — of local artists.

“We want to offer something that’s different than Arts Walk, and the difference is that visitors have the opportunity to have an intimate experience with our local talent,” said painter Kathy Gore Fuss, a tour organizer. “They’ll see the spaces where artists are working. They can have in-depth discussions and ask questions about the process, and there will be demonstrations in a number of the studios.”

Gore Fuss’s studio, an outbuilding in the yard of her Olympia home at 1302 Pioneer Ave. NE, is one of 25 on the self-guided tour, which features work by 74 artists including Joe Batt, Lynette Charters, Roxanna Groves Davis, Nicole Gugliotti, Aisha Harrison and Evan Clayton Horback.

Gore Fuss will show work from her latest series, which focuses on a nurse stump in Squaxin Park. Since June, she’s been drawing and painting various views of the stump, working outdoors in all kinds of weather.

“With this series, I’m trying to understand my own aging process,” the artist said. “The stump is another living part of our world that has gone through an extensive life cycle and is now towards the end of what it has to offer. But there are trees that are growing out of the richness of the stump. It’s providing sustenance to another generation.”

Kathy Gore Fuss of Olympia has spent much of the past year painting a nurse stump in Squaxin Park, circling the tree, painting eight angles, each in a different month. This is one of the paintings. Courtesy of Kathy Gore Fuss
Kathy Gore Fuss of Olympia has spent much of the past year painting a nurse stump in Squaxin Park, circling the tree, painting eight angles, each in a different month. This is one of the paintings. Courtesy of Kathy Gore Fuss

The series also speaks to the importance of trees — to Gore Fuss personally and to the world and its inhabitants.

“It’s of the utmost importance that we remember the significance that trees have for the health of our planet,” she said. “I work in local parks on a regular basis, and my goal is to help educate community members about the sacred nature of old-growth forests and to help people appreciate the fact that we have a huge number of parks within the city that are going to preserve the trees that exist there.”

As part of the tour, she’ll be hosting tree advocate Julie Ratner, who’ll talk about the importance of old-growth trees and share recordings of the nurse stump and other trees “singing” with help from a device that translates trees’ electrical signals into music. Ratner will be at Gore Fuss’s studio from noon to 2 p.m. Saturday, and visitors can listen to the recordings at any time during the tour.

Artist Kathy Gore Fuss has spent much of the past year observing and painting a nurse stump in Squaxin Park. She circled the tree, painting eight angles, each in a different month. Here is one of the angles. Courtesy of Kathy Gore Fuss
Artist Kathy Gore Fuss has spent much of the past year observing and painting a nurse stump in Squaxin Park. She circled the tree, painting eight angles, each in a different month. Here is one of the angles. Courtesy of Kathy Gore Fuss

Many of the studios on the tour often go unnoticed. “Sometimes, people in my neighborhood come on the tour, and they are like, ‘We didn’t know you were here,’ ” said the artist, whose yard is also home to a second studio used by Randi Parkhurst, who creates botanical prints and decorative boxes.

“Some people have no awareness that artists live and work right in their neighborhoods,” she said. “It’s helpful for our community to understand how artists are surviving and how we make it work.”

Some studios on the tour — including the Lacey MakerSpace on the Saint Martin’s University campus and Van Tuinen Art gallery downtown — are regularly open to the public, but even some downtown studios aren’t easy to find.

One example is LGM Studios, where Charters is showing her work along with Sandra Bocas, Lucy Gentry and Mikaela Shafer. The entrance to the second-floor studio at 111-1/2 Capital Way is in the alley next to the Brotherhood Lounge.

Charters will be showing a piece from her internationally famous “Missing Women” series along with new work celebrating such accomplished yet often overlooked women as astronomer Henrietta Swan Leavitt, and Josephine Garis Cochrane, who invented the dishwasher.

“The ‘Matilda Effect’ series celebrates women’s history and achievements which are less documented, less compensated and often appropriated, leading us to believe that women are only useful in supporting roles,” Charters said. “This series is painted on repurposed household objects, to provide context to the tension between how women are traditionally seen and the trailblazers they really are.”

South Sound Studio Tour

  • What: The free tour offers the opportunity to visit 25 art studios and check out work by 74 local artists.

  • When: 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, April 20 and 21

  • Where: Throughout the South Sound

  • More information: http://southsoundstudiotour.wordpress.com