West End Studio Tour

With all this time at home, we are certain our artists are busy creating some exceptional pieces for the year ahead. Happy New Year from all of us at WEST and we hope to see you very soon. In the interim, feel free to browse the web gallery on our site and reach out to support your local artists! Most will have online shops/stores and/or can arrange for safe distance viewing of works! Look for announcements about this year's tour to come!

Sunny day...sunny work from Westie Venz!

Merry Christmas and happy holidays from the artists of the West End Studio Tour!

This holiday season we wanted to update you all on what the artists of WEST have been up to (or one very special thing, specifically)! Spearheaded by (and the big credit goes to) Wendy Feldberg Artist, dozens of art kits were developed and donated to the Parkdale Food Centre for distribution to their families as a special surprise. Here are just some of the pictures, and an outline of details. Thank you to all who helped make this huge effort such an amazing success! __..._________________________________ From Wendy: My project idea was for us at WEST was for us to peer into the depths our art supply stashes and liberate as many art materials as we could bear to part with! I approached WEST first with the idea then asked members of other art associations to donate from their stashes also. ( see below). My goal was to make up art kits and donate them to the Parkdale Food Centre. The kits would go out to client families along with their food boxes. The Director at PFC sees an ongoing need for the children of these needy families to have more options for healthy recreation. I made up 36 kits ( see pics!) from the donated supplies. People who did not have suitable stuff went out and bought new items The kits were delivered tonight by my daughter and her son who had been volunteering regularly at PFC until COVID closed down that option. Also, we know that because of COVID, the artists did not have the option of meeting as a group to work on putting the kits together - so Sarah and Dylan helped there, also. There will be another batch of kits to follow this one - we received a lot of donations! So these will be assembled into packages also. In fact, the PFC Director says she sees an ongoing benefit throughout the year to having art kits available to send out with the food packages - kid birthdays, special celebrations, welcomes etc. One of the other art associations that donated says they feel they would like to try something similar since their members are famous for their bottomless-pit stashes. I documented the project ( Nov 30 - Dec 15) on Instagram to let the artists know how things were going but without mentioning individuals. And mostly in the fervent hope that other folks would see the need and the WIN-WIN benefits to artists and kids ( and their families) of sharing creativity. Participating donors -West End Studio Tour -Out of the Box Guild of Fibre Artists - Canadian Bookbinders and Book Artist Guild - Ottawa Valley Chapter -Calligraphy Society of Ottawa Kit Contents - papers ( plain, coloured and decorated) - pens, pencils, markers, crayons - eraser, sharpener, ruler - stamps -stencils -watercolour and acrylic paints and brushes -stickers -scissors -glue stick - paper palette - original art: samples of artist-decorated papers - a little surprise thingy in each paper box that contained small items