Road trip to Perth

Lying on the couch all the time – reading, writing, and knitting – is wonderful in its own way, but sometimes I have this burning need to go out and do something else, just to keep it wonderful.

Yesterday we did the Perth Autumn Studio Tour. It’s on today and tomorrow too, if you’re looking for something fun to do.

I love the studio tours because artists live and work in such gorgeous places. I get a contact creativity high just from being there. And this is the ideal time of the year to be driving up little dirt roads lined with flaming maple trees.

There are only eight stops on the Perth tour, but most of them feature several artists. We saw painters and potters and etchers and batik artists and photographers and jewelers and weavers and blacksmiths and woodworkers and furniture makers. (We missed a canoe maker.) My favourite was David Zimmerly, anthropologist, photographer, traveler and weaver.

On the Ottawa and Wakefield studio tours, the artists often put out cookies for their visitors. In Perth, they put out apples. They don’t look as good as store-bought apples, but they’re indescribably better, and they tided us over til lunch, which was the highlight of the day.

We ate lunch at Brooke Valley School, which is a tiny cooperative school in the woods. This year there are fourteen students from grade one to six, and one teacher. GC and I took our chili and bread to the sunny upstairs classroom where we talked to a mother with kids in the school. If I was a kid I’d love this school. (Tim Wynne-Jones was a Brooke Valley kid and remembers it fondly.)

One of the trippiest things about Brooke Valley School is their archeological dig. The original school, built in the 1860s, burnt down in 1981. The current structure was built a couple hundred feet from the school that burned. The school has since turned the old site into a dig. The children carefully sift through the dirt in their section of the grid, and uncover objects from the old school – horseshoes, skates, nails, all kinds of things. They carefully document and preserve everything.

The other highlight occurred as we were driving along a winding dirt road, when we suddenly happened upon some unexpected street art! Right there in the middle of nowhere! Rabbits bounding through a field and across the road!

This installation is called Hares and Squares, but it’s only one of an ongoing series called Fieldwork. It’s described as an “open-air field ‘gallery’ for artists to install thought-provoking, site-specific work in a rural setting for the public to discover.” There’s a new installation each season. The project even has its own blog.