Save the dates for the 21st Annual Open Studio Tour this summer! July 20-21 & August 17-18, 2024 from 11:00 am - 5:00 p.m. Discover the work of welcoming artists working in such diverse mediums as oils, acrylics, watercolors, photography, sculpture, basketry, fiber arts, ceramics, glass, wood, metal, jewelry, paper and mixed media.
SCA features two open studio tour weekends, typically the third weekend in July & August and includes up to 75 exhibiting artists to the four beautiful coastal towns of Tiverton, Little Compton, Westport and Dartmouth. Whether this is your first visit, or you’re a seasoned traveler to the South Coast, you’re sure to be impressed by the amazing quality and incredible range of creative work being produced in these scenic communities.
The SCA Mobile App is an electronic version of our printed brochure map, giving visitors to our studios a new way to explore the tour. The App is FREE to download and use for iPhone & android users. More information at www.SouthCoastArtists.org
Save the dates for the 20th Annual Open Studio Tour this summer! July 15-16 & August 19-20, 2023 JULY 15 & 16 and AUGUST 19 & 20, 2023
Once again, SCA will offer New Englanders the chance to visit the studios of some of the best artists living, working and exhibiting in the four beautiful coastal towns of Tiverton, Little Compton, Westport and Dartmouth. This well-publicized self-guided tour invites art lovers to travel along small highways and rural byways of stunning natural beauty. Open StudioTour weekends are free, open to the public, and require no preregistration or advance ticketing for visitors
SCA features two open studio tour weekends, typically the third weekend in July & August and includes up to 75 exhibiting artists to the four beautiful coastal towns of Tiverton, Little Compton, Westport and Dartmouth. Whether this is your first visit, or you’re a seasoned traveler to the South Coast, you’re sure to be impressed by the amazing quality and incredible range of creative work being produced in these scenic communities.
South Coast Artists - 2 Open Studio Tours
Welcome to the 17th Annual Open Studio Tours!
SCA features two open studio tour weekends, July 18-19 and August 15-16, 2020 and includes over 70 exhibiting artists. Save these dates! Firefly Mandalas will be participating in both tours and we are located at
630 Neck Road, Tiverton, RI 02878
(Also may google as 630 Puncatest Neck Road)
This is your chance to visit the studios of some of the best artists living, working and exhibiting in the four beautiful coastal towns of Tiverton, Little Compton, Westport and Dartmouth. Whether this is your first visit, or you’re a seasoned traveler to the South Coast, you’re sure to be impressed by the amazing quality and incredible range of creative work being produced in these scenic communities.
Learn More at: https://southcoastartists.org/openstudiotour/
Make(Her)Space: a podcast about women who dared.
Hosted by Barbara LoMonaco.
Meredith Brower is a Southcoast Eco-Artist, photographer, and founder of the Firefly Yoga & Wellness Festival. She regularly hosts workshops on her farm in Tiverton, RI, where participants forage natural materials, create a mandala design of their own and learn how to photograph and edit their Mandala works.
SCA Open
Studio Tours:
July 20–21
& Aug. 17–18
Be sure to visit Meredith at her barn studio at stop #5 at
630 Neck Road, Tiverton, RI. All you have to do is follow the map in the brochure and look for the blue and white Open Studio signs marking each studio or gallery. This year you can download our FREE MOBILE APP to make exploring the tour even easier.
This is your chance to visit the studios of some of the best artists living, working and exhibiting in the four beautiful coastal towns of Tiverton & Little Compton, RI and Westport & Dartmouth, MA.
The self-guided tour will take you across small highways and rural byways of stunning natural beauty. Along the way you’ll discover the work of welcoming artists working in such diverse mediums as oils, acrylics, watercolors, photography, sculpture, basketry, fiber arts, ceramics, glass, wood, metal, jewelry, paper and mixed media.
Both Open Studio Tour weekends are free, open to the public, and require absolutely no registration. More info at www.southcoastartists.org
Farm Studio
opens for SCA Tour
TIVERTON — Meredith Brower’s studio is in a barn her father built for their horses in the late 1960s on the family farm; it’s where she and her siblings spent hours playing when they were young.
Brower, a photographer and owner of Firefly Mandalas, now spends time in the old barn creating beautiful mandalas that she photographs and then makes into note cards, magnets, aluminum panels and matted photographs.
Her studio, like that of more than 100 other local artists in Tiverton, Little Compton and the Massachusetts towns of Westport and Dartmouth, will be open to visitors this weekend as part of the 16th annual South Coast artists Open Studio Tour.
“I think he would have thought this was cool,” Brower says of her father Leon, a former printing company owner, who she remembers as always being very creative. He died 12 years ago.
The morning walks she takes with her dog along the paths of the family’s Arrowhead Farm on Neck Road trained her eyes over time to forage for objects she could use to create the mandalas that are made out of textured leaves, flowers both in full color and dried, sticks, branches, feathers, grasses and rocks that were along the paths and shore of the pond. She’s used all sorts of things, even antlers.
She started making mandalas three years ago after learning about them from friends and going to workshops.
A professional photographer by trade, she has a bachelor of fine arts degree from Rochester Institute of Technology and worked for many years in a commercial photo lab, and then in graphics in the pre-print department of The Newport Daily News before setting out on her own and opening a studio in Newport where she specialized in photographing pets. She has just one studio now in Tiverton, surrounded by farm fields.
Each mandala she makes is named; it helps her remember where she was when she made it, the season, or what was happening that day.
A photograph of a mandala made of hydrangea, honeysuckle, shells, seeds, berries, thistle, wheat, catnip and mint, arranged in the shape of a heart and printed on aluminum, hangs on a wall in her studio. It’s titled “Anniversary” because she made it on her sister Suzanne Matusak’s anniversary.
“My Heart Weeps for You Willow,” is the name of one made from leaves from an enormous weeping willow tree on the farm, planted by her father before she was born, that had to be cut down.
She teaches people how to make mandalas, starting with a half hour walk around the farm, or on a property or beach where she is leading a workshop, where they can pick up objects they’ll use.
“You have to stop your mind from judging what you’re looking at,” Brower said of not having any constraints and acting on an initial impulse when choosing what to pick up.
“I think most people enjoy the foraging part. It’s difficult to get everyone back in,” Brower said of moving onto the next step which is deciding how they might arrange their objects.
“The grittier the better,” Brower says of objects that add lots of texture to a piece. She’ll sometimes choose leaves that have brown edges or a big worn hole in the middle.
“Nowadays everyone wants everything pristine and it has to be perfect,” she said, “but in nature it’s not.”
She doesn’t shy away from ragweed that has bright yellow flowers on the top and deep black and brown leaves on the same stem. “On the same plant there’s an intense color spectrum,” she said. “I try to drink it all in.”
She recently worked with a wedding party to create individual mandalas and one large one they worked on together.
“Not only was it pretty but it smelled good,” Brower said.
The photographs of the mandalas may be made into seating cards for the wedding and thank you notes.
Mandalas have a short life. The flowers wilt, the leaves dry up. They look totally different within minutes and hours of being assembled.
“It dries up and gets smaller and smaller and eventually disappears,” Brower said, which is why they have to be dismantled. “It will never look like the moment when you said ‘it’s done’. You appreciate it for a few minutes before the wind comes and blows it away.”
mpobzeznik@NewportRI.com
By Marcia Pobzeznik
Daily News staff writer
Method behind her Mandalas will enchant you
The beauty, symmetry and texture of Meredith Brower’s work will draw you in. The method behind her mandalas will enchant you.
Three years ago, while taking her morning walk through her farm in Tiverton, Rhode Island, Meredith Brower started organizing nature, forming a mandala out of the materials the earth provided. It began as a meditative way to start the day, connecting to the wet grass beneath her feet, feeling the roughness of tree bark, touching the delicate petals of a flower that had broken off its stem. Each day for an entire year she continued this exercise in mindfulness. She admits that some of the mandalas were great; some were not, but there was something about these creations she wanted to explore.
At first, Meredith considered keeping all the designs she made, but realized that pieces would fade and crumble as time passed and seasons changed. A professional photographer, Meredith decided to capture a photo of each mandala at the place where it was created. After immortalizing its image, she would toss everything back into nature, or simply walk away and leave it behind. It became an act of letting go, allowing her to honor the land, and leave a small footprint.
This Lambs Ear Heart is one example of Meredith’s work, and was inspired by a friend who hinted at her love of Lambs Ear, a plant known for the seafoam green color and soft texture of its leaves. This was one of the first hearts she was inspired to make.
After assembling the foraged material into the design pictured here, she sat with this mandala for an hour, not wanting to leave it or throw it back. “And then a big gust of wind came and blew half of it away,” she says with a laugh. “The only thing I can’t control is the wind."
Throwing the materials back into nature, or letting the wind sweep them away acknowledges the impermanence in our lives and in the world around us. And it’s this ephemeral beauty that Meredith captures in her work.
Beyond the unique, aluminum wall hangings and note cards she creates out of her photographs, Meredith knew there was something else she needed to explore with this work. She began sharing her process in workshops, inviting people to join her in foraging for inspiration, helping them take photos of their creations, and leaving each mandala behind to recycle back into nature.
Each person who joins her has a unique experience connecting with the world around them; Meredith says it slows you down, calms your mind, and gives you permission to be observe and explore. Even if that feeling is fleeting, it’s a tool you can use every day, whether you are in nature or not, to quietly experience the world around you and enjoy the temporary beauty of that moment.
Meredith Brower’s eco-art is available for purchase at The Drawing Room.
3rd prize 2019 SCA Annual
Art Contest
Third prize in the 2019 SCA Annual Art Contest was awarded to 'Forest Deer Mother Mandala', Impermanent Eco-Art with foraged fauna. Printed on aluminum by Meredith Brower.
The Juror, Mim Fawcett, director of the Attleboro Arts Museum, had this to say of Meredith's entry:
"The artist offers a compelling mix, a true savory/sweet expression. Antlers vs. aluminum, a delicate composition vs. random scars upon wood, eco-art vs. digital on metal. Forest Deer Mother Mandala is a tribute to earth as mother – unpredictable – with an edge that can surely cut.
Beauty and the beast, overflowing with counterpoints, a provocative universe."
Best Read Guide
The Newport Life Magazine featured Firefly Mandala Card sets in the latest 2019 Best Read Guide. Check out the latest Souvenirs in and around Newport RI.
Women, Words, and the Water features many Firefly Mandalas
BRISTOL, R.I. — SIREN Women’s Cooperative will hold a special book launch at Blithewold Mansion in July.
The Women, Words, and the Water Book Launch will take place at the Blithewold Mansion on July 20 from 10-11:30 a.m. The event will include a book sale and signing.
More event info at https://www.facebook.com/events/361173718076768/
May 2019, Portsmouth Press Article: click here.