RI Central - Visitors from near and far attend HOPArts

For the third consecutive year, 36 artists in the Chariho arts community opened up their studios across 22 locations, to showcase and sell their creations.

Since its founding in 2005, HopArts, a collaborative of Chariho artists, has maintained a mission of preserving the natural landscape that is so important to the artists and the art they create.

This year, the HopArts open studio partnered with the Wood Pawcatuck Watershed Association (WPWA) to show the public the importance of the local landscape in the creative process.

Leah Greer, one of the organizers of HopArts, herself and artist and Hopkinton resident, at her Main Street residence, opened up her living room to exhibit works from four area artists.

“The first year we started with 15 artists and that number has grown to 30”, said Greer. “It’s growing by word of mouth.”

Greer emphatically mentioned the increasing popularity of the HopArts open studio, saying that many visiting the event travel from Newport and Boston. There were also many New York license plates to be seen around town.

Greer, who moved to Hopkinton five years ago, began talking with other local artists and realized that there were a lot of artists in the area.

“We just lacked the community”, said Greer who, along with three others in the Chariho area, Susan Shaw, Rick Devin and Elaine Rosmond, founded the HopArts initiative.

“It’s a grass-roots happening,” stressed Greer, noting that everything that goes into the event comes from the community; it is a local event and a celebration of the people and the environment in which they live.

For this year’s event, the organizing committee had the idea of incorporating another conservation organization and approached the WPWA, one of the leading and most successful watershed conservation efforts on the East Coast, to bolster the effort and message that, according to Greer, fosters “stewardship of the community through the arts.”

WPWA Executive Director, Christopher Fox, praised the recent partnership with HopArts.

“We were happy to be a partner for the 2008 studio trail, we had an overwhelming response at headquarters and we’re looking forward to 2009”, said Fox.

Fox added that both of the artists with displays at the WPWA headquarters had beautiful exhibits.

Serena Bates had many of her sculptures on display at this location, including some award winning pieces.

Bates stressed the importance of physical environment in the creative process.

“The setting is perfect”, commented Bates. Adding, “the watershed was awesome and totally accommodating.”

One local artist, Ana Flores, a former painter turned sculptor and a second year participant in the open studios, stressed the importance of the collaborative.

“We need to make more of a connection between nature”, said Flores. “We’ll feel the loss more, when you cut down a forest, it’s part of us.”

Flores is enthusiastic about her work and its meaning. Her most recent work, yet untitled, is a set of wood sculptures resembling treelike hands reaching upwards, unmistakably a gesture of praise.

“It [the untitled piece] is a gesture of love and the good things people are” explained Flores to a group of several enthusiasts mulling about her Hopkinton studio.

Flores uses wood as her primary medium, most of which she finds in her back yard.

Describing where her influences and ideas come from she looked out the back window of her studio, out farther into the fall foliage and in a preoccupied manner said “it just absorbs you, it takes you off the normal path.”

Her neighbor, Richard Heines, another local artist and general contractor, mills much of the materials that Flores uses in her projects.

Greer, Flores and Heines are only three of the 30 artists that participated in this year’s event. HopArts participants are of varied guilds, whose style and mediums span a variety of methods.

Greer, excited about this year’s turnout, appeared optimistic about the HopArts initiative.

Greer was excited about this year’s turnout and estimated open studios drew a crowd of 360 people over the entire weekend. This is a growing number compared to the 2006 event, a sign, to many concerned residents, that community efforts to promote the arts and the environment are working.

“The success is a testament of how much this is needed”, commented Greer. “It shows the power of the arts to bring the community together.”