Studio Tour features diverse artists | Arts & Entertainment

This year’s Hidden in the Hills Artist Studio Tour features 179 diverse artists, including two artists who are inspired by nature.

Painting everyday scenes

A new artist to Hidden in the Hills, Scott Rispin creates colorful, highly textured, abstract landscapes that challenge the viewer’s natural desire to see things a certain way. His acrylic and oil painting, “The Red Tree” was chosen as one of five works highlighting the back cover of the event’s four-color, glossy artist directory. The painting was conceived during an evening stroll through the Phoenix Botanical Gardens. 

“My work has always been about attitudes, choices and ‘active seeing’ versus merely ‘looking.’ It’s about the nature of reality and what we claim to know about it,” he said.

Rispin began his career more than 30 years ago developing logos, carving and hand painting signs in his hometown of South Lake Tahoe, California. Since then, he has worked professionally in nearly every aspect of the arts. He has been an art professor since receiving his MFA in painting from Edinboro University of Pennsylvania in 2008.

“Many of my images are not born of exotic locations, experiences or narratives. They often come from parking lots, mud puddles and snowbanks, from weeds and sidewalks. They come from little scenes people pass by every day with neither the time nor interest for inquiry,” he said.

Rispin is a guest artist at Cindy Kovak’s Studio No. 36 in Cave Creek. A mixed media artist, Kovack is also a new artist to the studio tour.

The ocean’s brilliant colors inspire local artist

Cave Creek ceramic artist Paulette Galop’s mind is often thousands of miles away as she relives her experiences diving into the deep oceans off the shores of Belize, Mexico, and the Florida Keys. Fascinated by the beauty of the marine ecosystem, she creates stunning sculptural vessels that capture the brilliant colors and movement of the ocean. Art enthusiasts will have a chance to meet her at metal artist Paul Diefenderfer’s Studio No. 44 in Cave Creek. 

Galop grew up in Michigan painting, drawing and taking ceramic classes in high school. After earning her fine arts degree from the University of Colorado, she worked in an arts co-op making ceramic functional ware and then spent much of her career managing restaurants and working in retail. 

Her husband’s job brought them to Arizona 28 years ago, and some eight years after their move, she knew she wanted to work with clay again.

“I did not want to sit at a pottery wheel all day creating functional pottery, so I took a ceramic sculptural hand building class. It opened up my world, and I never looked back,” she said. 

Recently, she started creating large ceramic and steel totems that are inspired by desert forms. 

“They are very natural and organic. While I’m more spontaneous with my sculptural vessels, the totems require a bit of engineering and they have forced me to make a plan, which is a different challenge for me,” she said.

Visit HiddenInTheHills.org to learn more.