The Made in Mathews Open Studio Tour is back for its 24th year, offering area residents and visitors a chance to glimpse behind the scenes of the art world as they take a free, self-guided tour of up to 13 different artists’ studios in Mathews County.
The tour will be held over two weekends, opening the day after Thanksgiving. Hours will be 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Friday and Saturday, Nov. 28 and 29; noon to 5 p.m. on Sunday, Nov. 30; 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday, Dec. 6; and noon to 5 p.m. on Sunday, Dec. 7.
Brochures and maps of the tour are available at the Mathews Visitor Center and the Bay School Community Arts Center, both of which are part of the tour and are located on Main Street in Mathews. They are also available online at madeinmathews.com, along with information about all of the artists.
New to the tour this year are Angela and Scott Clawson of Mermaid Cove Productions on Gwynn’s Island and Lisa Capen of Lisa Capen Quilts in Bavon.
Mermaid Cove Productions
The Clawsons have combined their many talents to create a business model that suits both of them and fills a need in Mathews County’s art community. Scott is a longtime photographer and author of children’s books, while Angela has extensive experience in scanning, color-correcting, and printing artwork. The business offers everything from book publishing to giclée and fine art prints to creating pamphlets.
As a hybrid publisher, Mermaid Cove will professionally edit, format, and illustrate a book, then find a printing company that matches the author’s needs in terms of cover, paper quality, price point, and other variables.
“We have an in-house illustrator and copy editor, and a developmental editor who does editing with notes,” said Scott Clawson. “If you have a book but no agent, and you’ve been turned down by publishers and don’t know where to go, try us out…We want you to tell your story with good writing and a good story arc…We’re artists helping artists.”
The Clawsons’ studio is equipped with a 44-inch-wide high-resolution printer that can handle any length up to 50 feet, offering artists a local outlet for making large, high-quality, art gallery-style prints of their paintings, photographs, and other works of art.
During the tour, visitors to the studio will be able to peruse the books the Clawsons have written and published, view art prints they have made, and talk to the couple about having their own books or works of art printed.
His family bought a summer place on Gwynn’s Island’s Cherry Point when the neighborhood was first developed in 1953, and he spent summers on the island throughout his life. In 1998, the couple moved to Cherry Point, living for a year in the family cottage before buying a house across the street. All four of their sons went to Mathews schools.
Clawson did a tour in the U.S. Army before going into management and sales, working as everything from a heavy machinery dealer to a yacht broker. All the while, he was reading, writing, and photographing the world around him. Angela Clawson worked almost 20 years for the P. Buckley Moss Studio in Mathews before retiring to pursue her own interests in graphic design, printing, and bookmaking.
Lisa Capen Quilts
Lisa Capen first began quilting over three decades ago, inspired by an aunt who had been a lifetime quilter and left “a chunk of her fabric” to her like-minded niece.
But it wasn’t until 2016, after working for years as a restoration artist for an importer of fine accessories in Colonial Williamsburg, that Capen decided to turn her passion into a business. Her employer retired and closed the business, so Capen, who was already making the occasional T-shirt quilt on commission, started growing her home quilting business. She soon learned, however, that making large quilts wouldn’t pay the bills.
“I couldn’t make a living because of the time it takes to make a quilt,” she said.
Capen’s only in-person art class had been a pottery class in high school, but while growing up she always watched art videos on Saturday mornings and asked for paints and books as Christmas presents. So the self-taught artist called on all the various skills she had learned over the years, put on her entrepreneurial hat, and started designing and making art quilts and quilted throw pillows and decorative quilted objects in all sizes. She blended fabrics, threads, paints, and mixed media to create one-of-a-kind pieces.
She then began to make YouTube videos and tutorials, selling the quilt patterns she had designed to those watching her videos on her channel, “The Quiltmaker Homestead.” Her business, located in her home town of Poquoson, blossomed, with increasing numbers of followers watching her tutorials and buying her patterns and products. Pretty soon, Capen had outgrown her “she-shed” studio and had to move.
After combining households with her parents and moving a couple of times to places that never “felt like home, the family ended up in Bavon, in a home with a studio and room for everyone and enough land for a garden and chickens.
“When we saw it, we all fell in love,” said Capen. A bonus was that her fifth-generation ancestor, a Hudgins, was from Mathews.
Since moving to Mathews, Capen has continued to grow her business. She streams live on YouTube every Friday, making various projects that her followers can make along with her as she answers their questions and gives them advice. The project might be a gingerbread man or a turkey or a Santa Claus or a smaller piece that can be framed as décor. She enjoys occasionally designing a “mystery quilt” that’s made in pieces over several weeks, then assembled into a larger quilt. Thousands of people across the nation now watch Capen’s YouTube tutorials, and some of them will be coming to Mathews to visit her studio during the Made in Mathews Open Studio Tour.
Capen said she loves what she’s doing, and that if her participation in the Open Studio Tour sparks an interest in quilting, “It’s been worth it to me.”
Other artists
Other artists on the tour include Lynn Abrams (D’Lynn Glass Designs Studio of Moon), Susan Brodie Art of Mathews, Rosalie Brown (Bentwaters Farm of Susan), Tamara Rollins (Moonstruck Soap of Mathews), Wendy and Heather Powers Artisans at Sloop Creek, photographer Carol Manglos-Foster of Onemo, Karen Pittman Art Oil & Watercolors of New Point, P. Buckley Moss Galleries of Mathews, and Arnie Gustafson Into Woods of Cobbs Creek.
