On October 17 and 18, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., Accord hosted its first 4 Artists Within 4 Miles event. The event brought together four artists whose studios are located within four miles of one another, offering visitors a free, accessible opportunity to tour each studio, all just a short drive apart.

“Our whole idea was to make a tour that was doable in one day, because these tours become so out of control, like the Upstate Art Weekend. There’s just too many people that come in,” said Carole Aoki, one of the featured artists. “So we wanted to do four artists within four miles of each other. It’s been great.”

There was no need to rush during that crisp fall weekend, with just a brief drive between the four studios, each offering its own artistic style and relaxing atmosphere.

Gayle Saunders

At 221 Granite Road, Saunders has carved out a studio in the woods, where gentle lighting and ambient music welcome visitors. She uses a two-foot printer to print photographs onto Japanese kozo paper, which she then saturates with encaustic wax. The process gives her artwork a translucent, almost dreamlike quality. Much of her work hangs in the form of scrolls.

A series of jellyfish illuminated by LED lights hangs from a pole, their soft pink hues standing out against a deep blue, sea-like background. Saunders said she incorporated the lights to depict the jellyfish swimming toward the light. Other pieces, including one depicting the woods, are displayed behind frames. Saunders said these works were printed on archival German etching paper, which must be protected behind glass.

“The encaustic process is from the fifth century B.C. … the Fayum portraits were painted with wax, and they dug them up, and they looked the same,” Saunders said. “The Egyptian mummies were painted with wax. So you can hang it, and it protects from light, from everything.”

Wendy Hollender

Hollender’s home on Whitfield Road houses a studio and shopping gallery featuring vibrant botanical illustrations in colored pencil and watercolor. From a large, sketched rose in bloom to displays of plant families – from the green leaves and white blossoms of the coffee family to the diverse colors of the nightshade family – the artwork reflects the love of plants that first brought Hollender to the area.

Hollender ultimately found both a home and an artistic calling in Accord, where she also maintains a garden outside her house. She values capturing the precise details, colors and shapes of the plants she has come to love.

“I was a textile designer, and I looked at old botanical illustrations for reference, and I wanted to be able to draw, paint like that, so realistic,” Hollender said. “And I loved nature. I wanted to work from real plants.”

Beside one of Hollender’s current projects – a radish rendered in oil, a medium she said she has begun to “fool around” with – a real radish, complete with green leaves and roots, sits nearby. In fact, her studio could double as a miniature indoor garden, with real plants helping her make her work as vivid and true to life as possible.

Carole Aoki

Aoki’s Millhook Road studio welcomed guests with refreshments and a video demonstrating her process. Her work offered a different approach from that of the other artists, each of whom uses distinct techniques and materials. Aoki creates ceramics that combine traditional Japanese methods with a modern twist.

“I use black and white porcelain,” Aoki said. “What I do is I laminate a black slab of clay to a white slab of clay, and then I’ll cut and reassemble. So I develop a pattern, and then I’ll turn it 90 degrees, cut and flip every other one... So it’s a little labor intensive, but it’s a technique I’ve developed [from] a more traditional Japanese technique.”

Aoki said her work includes functional pieces; some are commissions for hotels and restaurants. Her ceramics encompass objects used in everyday life, including plates, sushi platters and cups. Black-and-white patterns appear throughout the collection, taking different forms: squares meeting at a beige circle on sushi platters, leaf and line designs on coffee mugs, and checkerboard patterns on plates.

Like tradition itself, Aoki’s work draws on an original vision without being bound by it. She said that when working with clay, either the technique or the idea often changes during the process – and that is precisely what she enjoys about the medium.

Nancy Ostrovsky

Readers may remember Ostrovsky from a previous Shawangunk Journal article. Her black-and-white paintings of birds, horses and humanoid figures on yellowed pages from Japanese and Chinese accounting books are hard to forget, and her Rochester Center Road gallery leaves a lasting impression.

“This piece is about growing up in Taipei, and these are the gates to my house, which were moon gates. This is me and my sister. This is the grand hotel that we used to swim at. These are Chinese opera figures,” Ostrovsky said. “I’m working a lot with octopuses because there’s something about memory and that they have three brains and each tentacle works independently. I’m surfing off of that.”

Ostrovsky was describing one of her latest ink pieces, a large composition featuring the familiar accounting-book pages, birds with human faces and Taiwanese buildings, with an octopus at the center that seems to narrate the scene.

Ostrovsky continues to explore new projects in the area. She has an animation exhibition scheduled at the Lace Mill Factory in Kingston alongside five other artists on November 7, as well as an ink show planned for next year at One Mile Gallery, also in Kingston. As Ostrovsky herself put it, “I don’t stop, darling.”