Theine philadelphia12/28/2022 ![]() ![]() Many also sell work from local artists or craftspeople who aren’t part of the group. They decorate for the season, with music playing in the background, and some offer demonstrations of their craft. In non-pandemic years, the artists put out freshly baked cookies and brownies, along with apple cider from nearby farms, during the tours. “You can always see art in a gallery at the mall,” says sculptor David Therriault, a Countryside Artisans member since 2005. For the regulars who hit all three tours in a year, the drives between the studios-and the bucolic scenes along the way-are part of the charm. A few of the group’s newer members live in Howard, Frederick and Carroll counties, just over the Montgomery County line. Several studios are situated within a mile or two of each other, but some are fairly remote. #THEINE PHILADELPHIA FREE#The group’s free tours are self-guided its website,, links to a Google map so visitors can plan their route. “You have to follow a map and prioritize what you want to see,” she says. Photo by Breann Fieldsīefore the tour, Zindash thought she’d “go down the line and see all these artists.” But that’s not the case. “I love how they change throughout the day with the changing light,” Zindash says. “I didn’t have space in my home for her paintings at the time,” Zindash says, “but I knew I’d be back.” Now she owns two of Howard’s canvases-both beach scenes the artist painted while at her second home in Bethany Beach, Delaware. Heather Zindash of Gaithersburg discovered Claire Howard’s art while on a Countryside Artisans studio tour with a friend in the spring of 2018. In a county of about a million people, the population of the reserve, which occupies about a third of county land, is today estimated at about 36,000, according to the Montgomery County Planning Department. With more than 500 working farms in the reserve, the area is rife with vibrant crops, well-kept barns, and grazing sheep and goats. Most live in the Montgomery County Agricultural Reserve, a 93,000-acre swath of land that winds through the northern part of the county and is tightly regulated by the county council to prevent suburban sprawl and industrial development. Today, there are 19 members of the Countryside Artisans, including a craft wine producer, an artisan brewer, a blown-glass maker, potters, mixed-media and fiber artists, a stone sculptor, a photographer, a tea farmer, and a craftsman who makes furniture using raw-edge slabs of wood. “I credit the artists I met for giving me the incentive to pursue my dreams,” she says. ![]() ![]() She first discovered the Countryside Artisans in the 1990s while looking to move farther out, “free from honking horns and traffic lights.” She read about the tours in a newspaper and decided to give it a try. “The locations change, so we all get a chance to visit each member and their work,” Howard, 69, says. Three weekends a year-in the spring, fall, and December holiday season-they hold open houses so visitors can browse their wares and enjoy a day in the country.īefore COVID-19, the artists would get together at someone’s studio a few times a year to discuss the tours and vote on any new applicants for their group. Those who want to join the group must have studios separate from their living space in a “countryside setting” within 30 miles of Sugarloaf Mountain, and their work has to meet the members’ “fine art” standard. One of the first things Howard did after buying her “perfect fixer-upper” and setting up her easels was to join the Countryside Artisans, a group of artists whose work is inspired by the scenic beauty around them. “I think that’s why the sky is such an important part of my work.” “It overlooks my husband’s amazing vegetable garden, the incredible nightly sunsets, and those fabulous sweeping clouds,” Howard says. Then she repurposed a guest cottage/pool house that the previous owners had converted from an old chicken coop. Now I’m an artist who sometimes helps my clients with interior design.” During her first few years “up-county,” as she calls it, she worked out of an old barn built into the side of a hill near her house. When she lived closer to D.C., Howard says, “I was an interior designer who sometimes did oil paintings for my clients. ![]() These days, the couple has the property to themselves, but their four children and eight grandchildren visit often. Landscape painter Claire Howard (right) has lived and worked on her pastoral 10-acre property, Lindenwood Farm in Poolesville, for Utility truck struck by freight train in Rockville ![]()
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