A Jitney Tour Through SOMA Arts Scene

Saying it was a hot day yesterday could be considered an extreme understatement, but art lovers were out in full force to take advantage of the 7th annual Artists Studio Tour in Maplewood and South Orange. Even with an occasional downpour, the tour kept going from 11 a.m. until 5 p.m. A jitney pass for this reporter kept it all together.

Here are some highlights from yesterday's tour, including artists Nancy Tobin, Howard Stein, Geralyn Robinson, Robert Coe, Rick Parker, Lisa Pressman, Peter Stoffers, Berc Ketchian, Alicia Vance, Suzy Arrington and Julie Esgun.

Nancy Tobin has a background in advertising and illustration, and when she moved to Maplewood with her family in 2001 she began painting full-time. One day, when Tobin accidentally spilled excess glue onto a collage, she discovered that she liked the look of the thick layers, and began working with glue as a medium to develop layers in her paintings.  She now uses acrylic medium instead of glue, in addition to paint, paper, pencil and her newest addition: glitter. 

Howard Stein has always played around in his garage, which has long housed tools in lieu of a car. An owner of older vehicles, Stein taught himself to weld out of necessity. Artistic by nature, he began making sculptures out of found objects and discarded car parts alike. He now houses many "animals" on the lawn of his house on Maplewood Avenue, which is a returning stop along the Artists Tour. 

Geralyn Robinson, owner and proprietor of Geralyn's Art Studio in Maplewood Village, displayed her art–including paintings and pastels. Robinson practices encaustic painting, which employs beeswax as a medium, mixed with pigment and applied to wood. She incorporates her photographs as well as vintage postcards and other artful paper into her works. 

Lisa Pressman also works in encaustic, and teaches at Geralyn's Art Studio as well.  Geralyn says that she saw Pressman's work at a show and fell in love with it, and thus began their artistic relationship. 

Robert Coe received his degree from the Rhode Island School of Design in oil painting, but for the last 2 years, has been working with watercolors. 

Rick Parker, a well-known cartoonist, was showing off, for the first time anywhere, his new parody comic book, Harry Potty and the Deathly Boring. Having had success with a send-up of Diary of a Wimpy Kid, titled Diary of a Stinky Dead Kid (for the Tales From the Crypt comic series), Parker decided to play around with another popular series. Using a plunger instead of a magic wand, Harry Potty is sure to be another success. 

Peter Stoffers uses photographs and Photoshop in a very unique way. He works from photographs, plays around with them on the computer, puts the photograph on canvas and paints it with his own color selection. He often mixes his own colors and will convert black and white photographs to color paintings, or color to black and white. 

Alicia Vance is a painter who started making stained glass 5 years ago when she decided she needed to spruce up a window in her house which didn't have the most pleasant of views. She uses glass and copper foil in her pieces, and will soon take classes to learn how to work with lead solder, as her painter's influence comes through and her pieces grow larger. 

Berc Ketchian has been painting since he was a 4 year-old boy in Istanbul.  The portion of his work that he displayed yesterday at Mona Lisa Framing, with the help of owner and proprietor Krista Hyer, was "unlike the work that he is known for," said Hyer. Painted between 1992-95, the emotionally charged paintings with vibrant colors, gold leaf and black background were during a "dark period" in his life, Hyer told Patch.  Ketchian himself said, "It was a period of life where I had to paint like that."

Displaying their gorgeous and wearable works of art, jewelry designers Suzy Arrington and Julie Esgun showed off their work on packed tables The Tenth Muse on Baker Street.