Meet the artists who live and work in San Luis Obispo County

San Luis Obispo County artists will once again open their studios to visitors, providing a rare glimpse into their most intimate, creative spaces during the 18th annual Open Studios Art Tour.

More than 200 artists throughout the county will showcase an array of media and styles during the event that runs two weekends in October. This year, 44 new artists have joined the tour, which is sponsored by ARTS Obispo. Many artists will also host live demonstrations and works in progress so that visitors experience the creative process first-hand.

Here, we’ve profiled three artists — Jennifer Stang Eickemeyer, Elizabeth Hudson, and Andrew Bingham — to highlight what the tour offers.

Jennifer Stang Eickemeyer

Eickemeyer, 59, is a strong-minded, passionate sculptor with an innate desire to create in non-conventional ways. She has long turned to art as a pure form of expression. Sculpting is now her passion and primary focus — using shattered glass to create delicate, detailed animals.

The Atascadero resident, who once aspired to be a teacher but found the education system unimaginative and too conventional for her liking, instead turned her attention to landscapes and sculpts. She has never taken an art class, saying that she never wanted her vision and voice to be impeded. “I come from a very naturally artistic family,” said Eickemeyer. “Emotion, sensation, (and) swirls of impetus to create run through me and drive me.”

She recalls walking the streets of her childhood neighborhood in west Los Angeles with a shoebox, collecting discarded items to later repurpose. “I am inspired by potential and challenge,” she said. She continued to create, long into adulthood.

A few years ago, she decided to try something new. Working with broken glass and wood, she began to craft small, dazzling animals. “This beginning to my shattered glass sculptures was a compilation of so many things I love: finding discarded items and reclaiming them in art; glass and its outrageous sparkling beauty; puzzles; little things; animals and nature; and humor,” she said. “And so, I humbly and happily began an art form … that defines and embodies me.”

Smaller sculptures take about a week to create. Larger pieces can take months. Eickemeyer painstakingly creates each piece in her studio — a nook in her garage. Her work is featured at galleries in Cambria, Harmony and Palm Desert.

“With my sculptures of animals, I actually feel like I am creating a new life, one that will add joy and beauty to the world,” she said. “This process is hugely inspirational to me.”

Examples of Eickemeyer’s work can be found at shatteredglasssculptures.com.

Elizabeth Hudson

Hudson, 35, has been inspired to create for as long as she can remember. The Paso Robles resident, who is also passionate about traveling, said curiosity and the urge to see new things compels her creativity.

A painter, she alternates between oils and acrylics, typically on canvas. For more detailed work, she uses a smooth board. She also enjoys painting murals and wine barrels. She is inspired by other artists’ work.

“Nothing makes me want to pick up a brush more than after I’ve just looked through an art book or visited a museum,” said Hudson. “There really isn’t one style of painting that I like more than another. They all have something amazing about them.”

A graphic designer by trade, Hudson decided to immerse herself completely in her passion for painting. She took workshops at the SLO Art Museum and the Esalen Institute in Big Sur and even lived with her mentor, Leigh Hyams, in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, for a few weeks of private instruction.

She spends early mornings in her home studio painting, until her arm needs to rest — typically about four-hour sessions. It takes weeks, sometimes longer, to finish one painting. “The time spent with the brush on canvas, working on the finished piece, is probably about 40 to 70 hours for a 16-inch-by-20-inch canvas,” she said.

A self-portrait with her Bengal cat, Maceo, remains her favorite painting and one that she can’t part with. Painted in a dark, old-world style, it includes a saying in French that translates to “A cat this beautiful will cost you” — a reference to how expensive Bengal cats can be, as well as how involved they become in their owner’s life.

However, during the Open Studios Tour she will be selling some of her other favorite works, including an abstract painting titled, “There’s a Bit of a Storm Upriver.” The calm, soothing colors transform into a strong, energetic story as brushstrokes depict thought and emotion on canvas.

Hudson has shown her work at local wineries and coffee shops, in addition to doing commissioned portraits. She was recently selected to paint a utility box in November as part of the San Luis Obispo’s Utility Box Art Program.

Instead of showing in her own studio, which she did in 2011, she is participating in the tour with four other artists at a friend’s space, to make it more convenient for visitors to see as many artists as possible at one stop. Three painters, an etcher and a glass artist will all show their work.

Examples of Hudson’s work can be found at http://www.lizhudsonart.wordpress.com.

Andrew Bingham

Bingham, 34, still remembers the moment he decided to pursue visual arts full-time.

“I had been practicing law unhappily for a year or so and literally woke up in the middle of the night with an idea to make art out of plastic for guitars, and I have never stopped innovating my techniques from that day until now,” said Bingham.

The Los Osos artist had long been passionate about music, particularly playing the guitar, but eventually shifted his creative energy to visual arts shortly after completing law school. After dabbling briefly in oil and encaustics, he began to solely focus on plastic as a medium for visual art.

No longer a lawyer, today he engraves and paints acrylic plastic. The process is meticulous and painstaking, involving dozens of hours designing an art piece on the computer. Each work goes through several digital iterations before an engraving machine brings the designs to life on sheets of plastic.

Then, he primes, paints and cuts the plastic sheet into various shapes and designs. Often, multiple layers of paint are required, leading him to repeat the process many times over.

“Andy Warhol once said, “I love plastic, I want to be plastic.” That quote very much represents what I am trying to do with my work on a conceptual basis,” Bingham said. “I am pushing against a fixed notion of authenticity, or solidity, and instead I’m putting hundreds of hours and all my energy into plastic — a material that is universally maligned as pliable, cheap and disposable.”

Bingham has not looked back since trading in his day job as a lawyer to pursue the arts.

“Because people can and should be plastic — moldable and formable, solid and liquid — all at once. Maybe there is no “authentic” self. Maybe there is just a thousand million potential selves within you, and your job is to form something completely unique from what comes your way.”

The most painstaking part of the process? Using a digital pen to draw each piece of artwork that will then be engraved using a CNC engraving machine. Bingham said that although computer algorithms exist to do exactly that, he prefers to do it by hand, letting human error, and soul, shine through. “I control the machines, not the other way around,” he said.

The design usually takes a few days of solid work, followed by the engraving machine, which runs for hours, sometimes days, in order to carve out enough of the plastic to be painted. Painting is all done by hand.

Visitors to Bingham’s studio will see his artwork mounted on electric guitars — another key passion of his. The engraving machine will also be running. “This is a great town to be an artist, and I just can’t wait to meet the people that stop by,” he said. “I just hope people will leave my shop looking at the world, and themselves, a bit differently.”

Examples of Bingham’s work can be found at decoboom.com.

This story was originally published October 3, 2016 at 6:38 AM with the headline "Meet the artists who live and work in San Luis Obispo County."