HILLTOWNS — When artist Natalie Boburka moved to Westerlo, it wasn’t because she expected to find a large number of other artists in the very-rural Hilltown community. 

But find them she did, and now, more than two dozen of these artists will participate in Boburka’s second-annual, self-guided Arts Around Greenville Studio Tour on May 20 and 21, during which people will be able to see not just the artists’ creations, but many of their studios as well, where visitors will see the artists at work. 

It’s an opportunity to connect with art on another level, Boburka told The Enterprise this week, and to learn more about what goes into the art people enjoy — and possibly to learn to enjoy styles or pieces they’d otherwise overlook. 

“The first studio tour was actually one I went on in Woodstock, and I fell in love with the whole concept,” she said. 

She likened the experience to the voyeuristic indulgence of walking through someone’s home, for, say, an estate sale, where context can be just as captivating as what’s on display. 

That experience was something Boburka thought she could recreate as she navigated her new home environment, where she admits she felt isolated early on, before meeting other artists. 

“It’s not an area where you have neighbors literally right next door that you walk out and say hi to,” she said. “Everybody’s kind of spaced out, and that loss of community was kind of daunting.”

Boburka sought out other artists and eventually met Barbara Walter, of Community Partners of Greenville, a not-for-profit that was seeking new programming.

They agreed that a studio tour would be a good idea, so Boburka came up with a list of over 70 artists within 15 miles of Greenville and invited them to participate in the first tour, held last year to great success, she said, and resulting in Arts Around Greenville being formed as a CPOG subcommittee.  

Many of the studios on the tour are privileged with the sorts of majestic views that make the region so attractive, Boburka said, so visitors will have a sense of what artists are exposing themselves to before and as they work on a piece. 

And the artists will be making their minds and techniques just as accessible as their properties, Boburka said.

“A lot of the artists [on the tour] will do demonstrations right at their studios, so you actually get to talk to them about the process, not just see it at the end,” she said. 

It’s a relatively rare opportunity to learn about “the work that goes on behind the scenes, all the things you just don’t even think about — from researching something to the emotional connection.”

In the tour’s inaugural year, artists sold $4,000 worth of work altogether, which Boburka attributed to the unique connection forged on the visits. 

The art, she said, becomes “not just something you walk by and saw on a wall. It becomes something that lives for you, because someone explained the motivation of why they created this and what the process was to do it.”

What’s particularly outstanding about this tour is the wide range of styles that will be on display, from the hyper-detailed and realistic drawings of Westerlo’s Tammy Liu-Haller — whose art was selected last year to be sent to the moon on a privately-funded shuttle payload — to the more abstract works of Boburka, which isn’t what one might expect from an area that tends to have more traditional, folkish tastes.

Boburka hopes that exposure to styles where the subject or meaning isn’t as apparent will help people understand that abstract pieces aren’t meant to confound people, but to make themselves available for whatever personal experience the viewer brings with them. 

One series that Boburka created, Shapes and Relationships, is made up of pieces that began as a mystery even to her. Each is a depiction of globule forms that adjoin, intersect, crash into, and float around each other against varied backgrounds.

“That whole series started during COVID, when I was just emotionally blasted …,” Boburka said. “Those drawings were almost like therapy. The whole series is starting with two shapes, so I’d put two shapes on a big piece of wood and I’d have no idea what they were doing there. I’d stare at them until I figured out what the relationship between them was.

“Slowly, as I’d start to build them, I’d go, ‘Oh, this is me figuring out parenting during COVID …,’” she said. “It became things like that, everything from relationships with friends and family members to ‘What the hell is going on?’” 

That process of creating one of those pieces is not dissimilar to what any viewer will go through as they look at it, figuring out how it relates to them, but only if they know how to get through that period of uncertainty. 

“It’s a matter of education …,” Boburka said, “It’s being introduced in the right way to the arts. And that happens for anybody. A lot of people feel like [art] is an ‘us and them’ thing, an elitist thing. And I’m like, ‘Absolutely not.’ Art is for everybody. So this [tour] was a way of getting that out to the public.” 

She emphasized that all the art is family-friendly, and that children stand to get just as much out of the event as adults, if not more. 

“I encourage people to bring kids out to this because that’s where it starts,” Boburka said. “They start by seeing something when they’re young and they’re like, ‘Oh my gosh, that was cool,’ or by talking to an artist. For a lot of kids that’s the gateway into being creative.” 

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The Arts Around Greenville Studio Tour will be held on May 20 and 21 from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. The event is free of charge, and the tour, which is self-guided, is contained within a 12-mile radius of Greenville Center. Maps will be available online at CPOG.org as well as at sponsoring-business locations.

The tour is part of an ongoing art show that begins on May 7 and continues through May 22, on Saturdays and Sundays only, at the North Barn at George V. Vanderbilt  Town Park on Town Park Road in Greenville. A reception will kick off the show on May 7 from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m., featuring refreshments and music by the band Moon Rocka.