Dartmouth crafters show off their works during annual Art Drive tours

Aug 6, 2022

This weekend saw the return of the Art Drive to Dartmouth’s roads. 

The event, which is in its 14th year, featured 27 artists from Dartmouth and Westport who opened their homes and yards to showcase a variety of media.

Painter and printer Judith Klein brought a collection of her work from her Kilburn Mill studio in New Bedford to her backyard on Merrymount Drive. Her works included abstract seascapes she’s seen from her New Bedford studio window along with portraits of her friends.

All these paintings, Klein said, are done through live sketches. While working off a photo is an option, she said pictures tend to be “frozen” and are difficult to transfer emotion onto canvas.

“When you work from a sketch, you did it,” she said.

With her prints, Klein said she starts by carving an image in wood or linoleum and then applies a paint roller to keep her design. At her display, these tended to be small prints of fruit or cats.

“People love the cat,” she said with a smile.

All of these are techniques the Romanian-born Dartmouth resident said she learned in art school in countries such as Israel and Italy. 

“I’ve been doing this pretty much my whole adult life,” she said, adding that she currently does private art lessons.

Wendy Goldsmith, who used to teach at Friends Academy, also opted to showcase her pottery al fresco at her Gaffney Road home, featuring dishes, cups, and flasks all made by her two hands.

“I don’t use a wheel anymore,” she said.

The Dartmouth resident first fell in love with pottery while she was a student at UMass Amherst. She said she especially likes the challenge of creating something that tends to end up different from how it was first imagined.

“You have to be flexible and persistent,” Goldsmith said of her craft.

Most of her custom dishware features her favorite animal: birds.

“I just love their expressions, shapes, and colors,” she said. “They’re everywhere and joyful.”

Some of the birds come from her imagination, while other depictions arrive from cameras attached to feeders.

“They just look at it and have all this attitude,” Goldsmith said.

The bird designs appeared to prove popular at Goldsmith’s stop, as throughout the second day of the drive, she noted it wasn't easy to keep up with demand for her plates.

“Things are flying out,” she said.

On Rock O’Dundee Road, painter Sarah Daughn hung several of her abstracts and cityscapes from her time in Providence — with some paintings using her daughter Jessica Godbey as the model.

“I made her pose everywhere,” Daughn said.

Her daughter, though, sees those works and can’t believe how dated her style was.

“That’s when I still had a perm,” Godbey said with a laugh.

Daughn, who still teaches at the Rhode Island School of Design, does a variety of styles including collages, watercolors, and oil paintings. 

Around 20 years ago, Daughn and her husband moved to Dartmouth, which she said completely changed the way she approached painting, as it made her focus more on the natural beauty than relying more on a subject.

“It’s a gorgeous place,” she said. “I hope it stays [this way].”

The Art Drive continues Sunday, Aug. 7, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. For the complete list of this year’s participants and a map of the artists’ studios, visit the-art-drive.com.