The 31st annual Apples & Art Studio Tour is coming to the region September 24th & 25th from 10 am to 4 pm. We have an incredible line up of more than 80 local artists exhibiting at 44 locations from Morrisburg to Alexandria, plus three Eastern Ontario Agri-Food Network sites are also participating!
Richard Salem, Executive Director for Your Arts Council, Cornwall & the Counties and Coordinator for the event, says: “We’re really stoked for this year’s event! There’s a good mix of returning and new artists and locations, covering a variety of disciplines from sculpture to textiles, as well as our always amazing painters and illustrators. Our new website showcases their talents as beautifully as we could have hoped.”
The arrival of fall is one of the most colourful events of the year in our area. The season dresses in its most vibrant hues while local artists open their creative space to visitors.
The goal of the Apples & Art Studio Tour is to give the residents of and visitors to Cornwall and area an opportunity to enjoy art in the spaces where it is actually created. It is a chance to meet the artists, to chat, to see their work in a natural setting and enjoy the wellness of visual beauty and friendly company.
You will discover all types of artists who work with paint, ink, clay, fine stones, wood and glass to create original pieces of art.
The tour is organized by a group of volunteers working with Your Arts Council, Cornwall & the Counties. The brochure showcasing the locations for 2022 is now available. Our website and Facebook page further explain the possibilities of this annual event. Late-joiners to the tour can be located through the website where the map of the sites and biographies of artists are available. On the site you can also find our proud sponsors.
Take two days to visit our area and the artists’ studios. To visit each location is to visit all corners of this great region.
HISTORY – A Look Back at the Beginning
About 31 years ago, Karen Cooper, then involved on The Seaway Arts Council with a keen interest in Graphic Arts, was having a discussion with transplanted NYC photographer Linda Gumbs about the richness of Artistic Talent in the community and the question was asked, “Why doesn’t Cornwall and The Counties have an Art Tour?” Well the answer was simple. No one had made the time to organize one. So with the support of the Seaway Arts Council, Karen and Linda joined forces with Regional Artists Martin Crevier and Janet Keefe to organize the first Artist Sponsored Apple and Arts Studio Tour.
The premise was simple. Artists would open up their studio space to the community and visitors, encouraging them to find out more about the arts through discussion about the work, their processes and through various hands on demonstrations that would take place during the tour.
The tour has always taken place during the last full week-end in September, harvest time for many apple varieties. The timing of the tour also celebrates the various local apple growers and the celebration in particular of the McIntosh Apple which was conceived right here in Eastern Ontario. The tour often includes studios and area businesses that feature special apple offerings in celebration of the tour.
The Tour has had several community organizations and artists who have organized the Tour each year. “It is wonderful to see how the Tour has grown and been transformed over the years” said Cooper.
The Apples & Art Studio Tour was the recipient of the Business Excellence Award for Tourism by the Cornwall Chamber of Commerce in 2016.
The 2021 tour saw 4,000 studio visits and $60,000 worth of art sold during the 2 day event.
