Joyce Westrop remembers when Enriched Bread Artists studio was still a bakery and the smell of bread would fill the neighbourhood, wafting into windows of cars on the Queensway.
More than two decades after EBA made the old Gladstone building its studio, the collective’s artistic output radiates through the community, as did the scent of fresh-baked bread.
A centrepiece of the Ottawa artistic community, EBA will host its 23rd annual Open Studio starting Oct. 29. Westrop, president of the collective’s board of directors, says Open Studio is about making art accessible for the surrounding community.
“For people who are curious about art but don’t know how to approach it, if you walk into a commercial gallery, it can be very intimidating,” she says.
Westrop will exhibit her work called “Universe/Community”, a series of metallic panels adorned with a unifying circle made of silverleaf. Westrop says the piece symbolizes how humans “create connections and a spirit of community” across the “vast expanse of the universe.”
Sayward Johnson, a textile- and metal-based sculptor who joined the group a year ago, says she finds it helpful for her creative process to be in a building surrounded by other artists.
“I’m the type of artist who likes feedback and critiques from my contemporaries,” she says, “and there’s something very reassuring and comforting, just being surrounded by other artists working and struggling and succeeding.”
Enriched Bread Artists’ Open Studio will be held at 951 Gladstone Ave., debuting on Oct. 29.