Where Art Thou? Head Inside the Studio to See Artists at Work 

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• Courtesy Of Sarah Vogelsang-Card
• HAVOC Gallery

Part of the magic of the South End Art Hop is that it offers a rare window into the everyday occurrence of art making. Open studios throughout the arts district give a glimpse into the creative process — visitors can step inside to witness metalworkers crafting intricate jewelry, graphic artists designing witty prints, oil painters capturing evocative New England landscapes and sculptors shaping whimsical papier-mâché pieces.

Of course, that's just a tiny sample of the art that's born in the nearly 100 participating studios. Read on for insights into seven studios, then head out and meet some makers this weekend.

Light Show

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• Courtesy Of Sarah Vogelsang-Card
• "Gloria Mundi" by Bruce MacDonald

Eighteen-wheelers once fit into Bruce MacDonald's HAVOC Gallery, which is apropos because the abraded-metal artist tends to think big. His latest, "Gloria Mundi," is an 8-by-12-foot triptych on sheet metal. Though flat, its swirls of mandalas, chevrons, rays and curved coffers appear layered, almost 3D.

MacDonald can create any illusion on steel surfaces with his grinders, polishers, sanders and even a handheld Brillo pad-like material. The trick is that he understands how his abrasions engage the light. The eye's ability to process reflected and refracted light is something of an obsession for him. In fact, "The Eye," depicting a giant human eye, pays homage to what he calls "the best eye we've ever made" — the James Webb Space Telescope. (He's also a bit of a space nut.)

Aside from a woodcut of an orange dot signed by Damien Hirst (price available upon request), MacDonald provides the gallery's color himself. Large acrylic canvases explore how two opposite hues — green/red, yellow/purple — interact with each other. And if you want color with your metal surfaces, just ask: The artist custom installs modified landscape spotlights that can cycle through the rainbow.

— A.L.

HAVOC Gallery, 27 Sears Lane, havocgallery.com

Master of Arts

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• Longina Smolinski with part of her project “A Set of Feelings”

On the far southwest end of the Art Hop, Longina Smolinski works upstairs in the Green House, an artists' hub, in a 10-by-13-foot room. The small studio feeds rather than limits her creative explorations, which include abstract paintings in acrylic or cold wax, collages, jewelry, and works in clay.

"I do a lot of different things," admits Smolinski, who moved from Poland to the U.S. in 1988. She points to "Curtain," an installation lining one wall: three large-format photographs mounted on aluminum that she took of curtains of porcelain leaves hanging in nature, with the same white leaves scattered on the floor around the photographs. The work is meant to "remind us how we are so unsure in life," she said. "We stand in front of the curtain in fear, but all we have to do is walk through it."

Smolinski earned a master's degree in ceramics design and, last March, completed a second one in painting at the Eugeniusz Geppert Academy of Art and Design in Wrocaw. Asked the title of a painting on paper layered with patterns and shapes in pastel colors and signed simply "Longina," she paused.

"The River Never Stops," she finally said. "I just made that up!"

— A.L.

Longina Smolinski, the Green House, 180 Flynn Ave., longinasmolinski.com

Busy Being

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• "Dandelion #5" by Jodi Whalen

Jodi Whalen began silk-screening in 2022 after selling August First, the Burlington bakery and café she and her husband owned for 13 years, and taking a class with Burlington City Arts. In that short time, her colorful, graphic images often ringed with 1950s-like stars have become a hit. "Creemees > Soft Serve," featuring a pink creemee in an orange wafer cone framed in a turquoise dotted arc, is a best seller at Frog Hollow Vermont Craft Gallery in Burlington.

Whalen's studio, on the first floor of Howard Space off Howard Street, is one of the easier ones to find in the former brush factory's interior maze. Cheerfully lit, it will feature her framed and unframed silk-screen prints and cards, including a new series of semiabstract Vermont wildflowers. Whalen draws her original designs with an Apple pen on an iPad using the digital illustration app Procreate. Some are silk-screened onto her handmade paper containing knapweed, nettles and other ingredients she forages.

While fairly new to silk-screening, Whalen has taught herself everything from abstract acrylic painting to making bread lamps out of epoxied baguettes. No wonder her business name is jodi being jodi: "It came from a family member who commented about how I am always on the go and creating things," she said.

— A.L.

jodi being jodi, 12 Howard St., jodibeingjodi.com

A Clay to Remember

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• Courtesy Of Rick Levinson
• A Rachel Morton sculpture

Rachel Morton's sculptures convey personality in their faces, gestures and postures. "This guy's super intense," she said, pointing to a figure with chopped-off arms, one eye open and a nasty frown. "See those two people together?" Morton continued, referencing a girl draping her arm over a boy's shoulder. "They're really kind of sweet."

The Burlington sculptor said the Watergate hearings in 1973 sparked her interest in the craft. Drawn to the drooping jowls of committee member senator Sam Ervin Jr. (D-N.C.), she started to sculpt him.

"I had clay and, for the first time ever, I made a head. Damn, if it didn't look like him," Morton said. "I thought, Wow, hmm, maybe I could do this."

Instead, she pursued a career as a magazine editor. But Morton returned to sculpting years later, building busts and figures full time in her studio on Howard Street.

She used to concern herself with anatomical accuracy, Morton said. But now she omits limbs and distorts proportions. More abstract works can better communicate universal emotions, she believes.

"You're not really trying to figure out who they are or what they do for a living or whether they're married," Morton said. "You see something in their eyes, something like hope or yearning or sadness."

— H.F.

Rachel Morton Sculpture, 4 Howard St., rachelmorton.art

Fabric Magic

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• Courtesy Of Dale Donaldson
• A jacket from Kitty Badhands

Kitty Badhands co-owner Kathleen McVeigh can transform your grandmother's quilt into a fashion statement. Using sustainable fabrics such as vintage bedding or tablecloths, she sews jackets, dresses, tops and bags. Her garments typically have vibrant colors and busy patterns — think a rainbow-striped motorcycle jacket with pink tassels, or a dress made from a tablecloth with pastel-hued fruit.

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• Courtesy Of Dale Donaldson
• A matching set from Kitty Badhands

McVeigh calls her brand part of slow fashion — an antidote to cheap and trendy fast fashion — that focuses on timeless, high-quality designs built to last.

"We're not making 100,000 pieces and expecting to sell half of that and thinking that that's good, which is what a lot of fashion brands do," McVeigh said. "The way that it's made, we want to spend time on details and construction."

At Art Hop, Kitty Badhands will host New York textile artist Maggie Pate, who will showcase her naturally dyed silk clothing.

Sustainability "was something that I grew passionate about as we continued on," McVeigh said. "The more you learn, the more you realize what a crazy and devastating effect fast fashion and big companies have on the planet."

— H.F.

Kitty Badhands, 28 Howard St., Suite 304, kittybadhands.com

Wood Vibes

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• Courtesy Of Ryan Bent
• Matthew Hastings' hand-crafted wood furniture

Designer Matthew Hastings has found surprising similarities between his former job as a cook at American Flatbread and his current career constructing furniture at RIVEN.

"You're taking a rough ingredient, like an onion or carrots, where [here] I'm taking a rough piece of lumber and I'm refining it down into this finished piece," Hastings said.

He makes custom wood furniture and home goods — cabinets, tables, chairs, cutting boards — in collaboration with interior designers. His pieces are sleek and minimalist, highlighting the natural beauty of the wood. Hastings said he sources the highest-grade hardwood from Massachusetts and seeks out boards with an interesting grain.

His favorite, and largest ever, project was a custom 14-foot credenza for a home in Shelburne. "It was huge!" Hastings said. "I had to rent a truck to deliver it."

Hastings honed his craft at Yestermorrow Design/Build School in Waitsfield, where he spent four months "living and breathing furniture morning, noon and night.

"I believe very, very strongly that one of the keys to having a good, full, wholehearted life is to create things," Hastings added. "I've always been drawn to things where I'm working with my hands."

— H.F.

RIVEN, 4 Howard St., Suite C-1, riven.co

Interstate of the Art

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• "End of the Road for Barbie" by Aaron Stein

Aaron Stein shrugged off his collection of 4,500 license plates, stacked floor to ceiling inside a cramped studio at the Soda Plant. "By collectors' standards, that's nothing," he said.

Stein began collecting license plates at age 10, frequenting junkyards with his parents. By the time he was a teenager, he owned plates from all 50 states.

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• “Surfing the Past” by Aaron Stein

"My parents told me I was identifying cars before I was reading words," Stein said. Now, he's a construction worker by day and all-things-automobilia artist by night.

At Art Hop, Stein will show plates converted into picture frames, a self-portrait collage that includes a New York license plate from 1962 (the state and year of his birth), and videos of Fluffy the Floating Cloud Bank. The latter is a 40-foot bus covered in clouds and LED lights that Stein and more than 100 other Vermonters created for the 2022 Burning Man festival in Nevada.

Stein also creates custom wedding gifts, including picture frames that combine plates from each partner's home state. "I try to come up with designs that I would enjoy seeing out there in the world," he said. "It's one of those passions turned obsessions."

— H.F.

Revival Studio, 266 Pine St., revivalstudio.com