One weekend several years ago, when then-art teacher Russell Ford wanted to do anything else but look at art projects, his wife persuaded him to tour some artists’ studios.
Ford taught art for 25 years, and he recalled wanting nothing more at that point than to just relax and maybe watch a football game.
“My wife says, ‘No, we’re going out, we’re going to see art, because I want you to see that it’s OK, I want you to get permission to be an artist,’ ” he recalled.
The trip had precisely the desired effect, he said Sunday in his Arnada-area home’s workspace, surrounded by his ceramic faces, fish, and flower pots sculpted like villas, along with all the tools and trappings of his work.
“You go into another artist’s studio, and what I’m looking at is not necessarily the art, it’s all the other things that are going on. It’s the postcards on the wall, the little pieces of inspiration, the messes they have in the corner, the quality of the messes,” he said. “You find what makes them inspired and how they follow through with it.”
As with on his tour, Ford opened his studio to the public over the weekend, for Clark County Open Studios, where 50 artists around the county opened up their studios to talk shop, show off their work and sell it to any interested patrons.
That studio tour, Ford said, gave him “permission to be messy,” and to create in a way that felt pure and unhindered by worries about the finished product.
Ford mostly does printmaking and ceramics. Ford taught in the Hockinson School District and still helps with the school kiln. Ceramics is special, he said, because even after all the work and effort of sculpting or turning, the work isn’t done.
The “end product” still needs firing.
“Taking the best of your creation and saying, ‘OK, universe, you think it’s as cool as I think it is?’ ” he said, laughing. “I like being humbled.”
The weekend was the event’s sixth year, said Karen Madsen, chair of event organizer Arts of Clark County. The group brought in 15 new artists this year, and has included a total of 150 since its start.
The weekend’s tours included sculpture, painting, printmaking, photography, metalwork, glasswork, fiber art, mosaics, woodwork, leather crafts and mixed media projects.
This year was among the busiest she remembered, at least for her Hough neighborhood studio space.
“What’s really great is that people are so engaged, and they’ve been asking about the materials, and asking how this works or that works,” she said.
Others asked about the local art scene in general, and she points to the opportunities that may be available when the National Park Service moves its regional office to Vancouver, and the city of Vancouver’s willingness to use lodging tax funds to help the studio tour.
The tours have been so well-received, she said, in part because the organizers try to keep entry accessible with low fees, which also helps keep the offerings diverse.
“It’s been very successful because it allows for a whole variety of artists, and that’s what we really want to keep going, because it’s the artists that bring in the visitors,” she said.
