MOUNTAIN VIEW — With so many artists to meet, see and buy from in the Mountain View area, locals have presented a yearly tour to help.
The 15th annual Off the Beaten Path Studio Tour takes place in and around Mountain View from Friday to Sunday. The tour is free and open to the public.
“We started it to showcase all the wonderful artisan-crafts people that are in Mountain View,” said Becky Dahlstedt, an artist who volunteers as the tour coordinator each year. “We didn’t really have a presence in local festivals and stuff, which we had historically. We basically wanted to call attention to the artists that we have here.”
There will be 32 artists in 22 studios within 30 miles of the Mountain View Courthouse Square to see. The self-guided tour, which requires visitors to use a personal vehicle, provides a booklet with information on each artist and his or her studio, along with a map and directions to each studio.
Artists on the tour include those involved with metalworking, pottery, jewelry, painting, beadmaking, photography, furniture making and more.
“All of these people are involved with various arts organizations and activities here in Mountain View,” Dahlstedt said. “We’re a strong community.”
Dahlstedt and her husband, David, own Dahlstedt Pottery and have been involved with the studio tour since its beginnings. The Dahlstedts pottery has been sold to galleries such as The Butler Center for Arkansas Studies in Little Rock and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville.
The tour gives people an up-close-and-personal opportunity to purchase handmade items, Dahlstedt said, and it also helps area businesses because of all the visitors.
“It really gives people an appreciation of what the various crafts are, what they involve, what people do,” Dahlstedt said. “They’re much more likely to buy. This has certainly been the case on this tour. Everybody over the years felt that this was a wonderful opportunity to sell.”
Dahlstedt said the tour features private working studios only, which one might otherwise have to call in advance to schedule a time to stop by. The tour also includes a peer-review group that makes sure each studio can comfortably and properly accommodate guests.
“If you include retail shops, it’s not special,” she said. “You can go to the gallery any day or you can go to a facility that’s open all the time. That’s not of any particular interest. The special part of this is that you go into the private working space of artists.”
Because the tour is spread across 30 miles, the farthest studio being in Pineville in Izard County, Dahlstedt said it can also be seen as an adventure.
“If you’re going to come and do all the studios, it’s going to take you three days,” she said.
Some studios are a part of an artist’s home, Dahlstedt said, giving visitors a chance to also meet the artist’s pets. Jeanette Larson, fiber artist and craft director at the Ozark Folk Center, raises goats, sheep, a llama and alpacas at her home studio, Common Threads, where she creates shawls and rugs from wool.
Larson said she and her partner, Shawn Hoefer, who makes artisan brooms, invite the public to view their studio — and also get a taste of Larson’s homemade cheese — located about 2 miles outside of Mountain View. Between 90 to 120 people visit Common Threads during the Studio Tour weekend, one of only two times a year Larson and Hoefer open their workspaces to the public.
“It’s absolutely gorgeous here,” Larson said of the Mountain View community. “It’s a creative community. I don’t know what makes it such a creative community, but it is. There are a lot of really, really talented people — national-level talented people.”
Larson said visitors always enjoy meeting the farm animals and that she enjoys working with wool because of its texture.
“I can get the most incredible textures into a piece, and it’s comfort, too, because I work with animal fibers, and there’s something so relaxing about wool,” she said.
Larson said she hopes visitors learn about the origins of the materials she creates.
“You can start from the very beginning and create things that are beautiful in a modern life,” she said. “The beginning being the Earth, and the beginning being the whole history of weaving and my hands. You can start from a very beginning.”
Dahlstedt said that she hopes visitors to the studio tour are inspired to return next year.
“We hope that they start making their reservation and booking their rooms so they can come back next year because there will probably be things they didn’t see that they wanted to see,” she said.
The Off the Beaten Path Studio Tour is open from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Friday and Saturday, and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday. Studio Tour booklets can be picked up at the Arkansas Craft Gallery and Mountain View Chamber of Commerce in Mountain View. Outside of the city, booklets can be picked up at the Baxter County Library in Mountain Home, Calico Rock Museum and Visitor Center in Calico Rock, and the Batesville Area Chamber of Commerce in Batesville and at offthebeatenpathtour.com.
For more information, visit offthebeatenpathtour.com.
Staff writer Syd Hayman can be reached at (501) 244-4307 or shayman@arkansasonline.com.