Sixth Annual Studio Tour Features 75 Artists

Set for this Sunday, South Orange and Maplewood's Artist Studio Tour could be billed as a two-for-one, giving participants a chance to experience the work of accomplished local artists and to tour the homes that double as their work spaces.

Now in its sixth year, this year's edition of the tour features 75 artists—up from the usual number of 50 to 55, according to Judy Wukitsch, director of the Pierro Gallery and an organizer of the tour. While there are group shows at the Baird and 1978 Maplewood Arts Center, most artists show out of their home studios, giving the tour a much different feel from counterparts in urban environments like Jersey City, Hoboken and Newark, where artist studios are often strictly work spaces.

"One of the underlying secrets of the tour here is that you have a chance to go into people's homes. If not in the garage or basement, they're going to be in an attic space or another room within the house," said Larry Dell, a sculptor who's installing work at 1978 this year but has shown out of his home in the past. (He's showing four pieces made from PCB pipe which is then heated, bent into shapes with garden hoses and other tubing and painted.)

Susan Napack of South Orange uses a shed in her backyard as a studio and says it's filled with hundreds of pieces she's worked on—everything from digital prints to jewelry to mixed media pieces utilizing sculpture and photography. There have been years when over 100 tour attendees have visited her studio.

"It's exhilarating," said Napack, who's a New York-based art director. "Everyone is always really positive, and if they're not, they just don't say anything."

Among her works this year are vinyl baseball card sleeves with hundred of pockets she's stuffed with autobiographical items ranging from photographs to her grandmother's stockings to seed pods to sequins.

There's a consensus among tour participants that South Orange and Maplewood have become a magnet for artists, but there's a range of theories offered as to why. South Orange resident Sarah Petruziello—who's showing pencil drawings ranging from 8 by 8 inches to 4 feet tall at 1978—once lived in Boston and remarked that the artist community in South Orange and Maplewood feels more inter-connected.

Proximity to New York attracts artists, as does the two towns' relative affordability and diversity compared to neighboring suburbs. Dell thinks that the interesting architecture of local homes could also have something to do with it.

"Artists tend to stay away from newer kinds of housing developments," he said.

South Orange resident Jennifer Takahashi lives just over the Maplewood border, near Columbia High School, and says her immediate neighborhood is populated with artists and actors, and she and her husband have chosen to remain there instead of moving to ritzier sections of town.

Her studio is on the third floor of her house, and this year's works are a continuation of still lives intended to express the way senses are used to describe the physical world, inspired by Hindu philosophy.

Though her home is currently filled with her paintings—occupying places that works by other artists normally take—Takahashi says it's not ultimately difficult to part with them in the event of a sale.

"You're only ever really in love with the last piece you worked on," she said.

The Artist Studio Tour is from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Sunday. Tickets can be obtained at the Baird and 1978 Maplewood Arts Center on the day of the tour for $6 from 10:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. They'll still be available for $5 on Saturday at some local businesses.