By Adam Frisk Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
When the Studio Tour Haliburton Highlands opens this weekend, visitors will see how local artists turn everything from textiles and steel to clay into finished work.
The tour runs over two weekends, Oct. 3–4 and Oct. 10–11, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily.
Mixed-media artist Stephanie Ford Forrester is joining the tour as an official artist for the first time. She spent 25 years on the Kawartha Autumn Studio Tour and, in recent years, spent her falls directing gravel-road parking for her daughter, fine art photographer Corin Ford Forrester. This year, the two are sharing Studio O.
Ford Forrester spent more than two decades working primarily with textiles before moving into mixed media two years ago. She said the change came while she was helping gut a 200-year-old log home in Perth. Digging through layers of burnt wallpaper, plaster and wallboard got her thinking about her work.
Her current series combines cut photographs of wetlands with painted birch panels, drawing on time spent kayaking the Otonabee River and Lake Katchewanooka.
“It gives a kind of unusual interpretation of marshes,” Ford Forrester said, adding that her work highlights wetland fragility and conservation. “It’s been quite a little journey to have a major shift in one’s medium.”
At Studio D, bladesmith Brad Millman is taking part in the tour for a second year. He has taken over the spot previously held by fellow smith Paul Savage.
Millman has been forging tools for 11 years, making all of his custom patterned steel in-house through forge-welding.
He starts by considering what the steel needs to do. The artist explained that high-carbon steel is used for chef knives because it holds an edge, while axes are made with a lower-carbon tool steel that can absorb shock without shattering. The handles are matched with stabilized woods designed to resist shrinking or warping in damp conditions.
“I want them to almost be like shaking an old friend’s hand,” Millman said. “Everything we make is considered functional artwork. You want someone to look at it and be amazed by it, but also want to use it every day.”
Ceramic artist Renée Woltz is returning for her sixth year on the tour, showing as a guest of watercolourist Gord Jones at Studio F.
Woltz moved to Haliburton 15 years ago and spent a decade developing her pottery skills before applying to the tour in 2020.
Her work involves intricate hand-carving and wallpiercing, along with Raku firings that require her to pull red-hot pots from a 1,000 degrees celsius kiln using metal tongs. She said that the glaze chemistry provides a rough guide, but the smoke and flames introduce an element of chance.
Woltz is also interested in how people respond to the finished piece when they hold it in their hands.
“It’s not such an intellectual noticing of something, but a feeling that they get from it,” Woltz said. “If it’s a functional piece, a sense of comfort; if it’s a decorative piece, an appreciation for beauty, grace, and motion.”
Full studio listings and route maps are available online at thestudiotour.ca.
