Vicky Kurk at Clover Hill Studio in southeast Houston County — one stop on the 2025 Bluff Country Studio Art Tour. (Photo provided by Vicky Kurk)

Remarkable Artists Open Their Houston County Studios For Regional Art Tour

 

SOUTHEAST MINNESOTA — Art is therapy, and for three days each April talented artists from around the greater Root River Valley region invite anyone interested in sharing this creativity, this ‘therapy’, up close.

This year’s 24th Annual Bluff Country Studio Art Tour of Southeastern Minnesota (BCSAT) takes place April 25 to 27, 2025, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily; it features 22 artists and galleries including three amazing Houston County artists, each of whom you could sit and chat with for hours like old friends.

Clover Hill Studio, in rural Spring Grove, is run by Vicky Kurk who creates leaded stained-glass artwork; GK Fine Art Paintings, near La Crescent, is owned by Georgina Kingsley, one of nine new artists on this year’s tour; and Seven Bridges Pottery, west of Houston, is where “art tour veteran” Mary Denzer, makes rustic stoneware pottery. Denzer is one of two early BCSAT organizers that still participates annually.

Clover Hill Studio 

Vicky Kurk started Clover Hill Studio with her late husband in 2005 in an 1800s barn. It’s located at 13604 Duck Creek Drive, southeast of Spring Grove. Kurk is a leaded stained-glass artist who has been on the Bluff Country Studio Art Tour since 2008. In addition to her art, “getting ready for the art tour now includes making my own stands for my art,” she said. 

 

 

Inspiration comes from nature that surrounds her rural studio. “I enjoy trees, and they appear in my work,” she said. “I add painting and firing detail – sparkle is added in by jewels made in West Germany, and my work with bevels creates another dimension in the work.”

To learn her craft, in 1996, Kurk took a community ed class, then classes through Glass Gallery and Western Technical College in La Crosse, Wis. She also received private instruction from an artist in Iowa to learn the ‘lead came’ technique used in her stained glass works. In 2006, she attended a class in Warrenville, Ill., on traditional stained-glass painting.

 

 

Kurk has had two bespoke artworks, both commissioned by organizations in Preston, Minn. In 2020, she was commissioned by the Preston Area Arts Council to create a custom-designed backlit stain glass panel, measuring 5 feet by 3 feet, for the Minnesota State Veterans Cemetery’s Administration building. She titled it “The Morning Rise” and created a written tribute pictured below it.

Last fall, she was commissioned by the American Legion Auxiliary, Unit #299, from Mabel, Minn., to make a 16-inch-diameter painted glass panel for the Preston Veterans Home, which she called “Red, White & Glory.” 

Kurk said that the time it takes to create a piece varies. She creates a stained-glass piece like the round panel for the Preston Veterans Home in about three weeks, plus time for approval meetings at each stage. Her creative process has multiple, detailed steps. To know when a piece is finished, Kirk says, “I feel the balance and I can go forward. It goes back to the balance in my original drawing, and I keep refining.” She then names each piece. 

Two area galleries display her artwork: the Bluff Country Artists Gallery in Spring Grove and the McGregor Marquette Center for the Arts in McGregor, Iowa. She is a member of the River Arts Alliance in Winona, Minn.

Word of mouth is Kurk’s “old school” marketing strategy, so she has her landline and email. Her studio is open by appointment and each spring for the studio art tour. 

GK Fine Art Paintings 

Georgina Kingsley is preparing her studio for its debut, located at 46988 Al Moore Drive, north of La Crescent. Born and raised in England, she was formally trained at the United Kingdom’s Bournemouth Arts Institute, earning a bachelor’s in fine art and specializing in color theory. She says common themes that run through her paintings are “nature-inspired, landscape-inspired and there’s more than likely a blue hue somewhere.”

 

 

Her studio sits perched atop a sloped hill, surrounded by nature, just west of Interstate 90, near Dresbach. It’s “the perfect spot to get both the morning and evening sunlight,” Kingsley said — and that’s what inspires her. “I grew up on the coastline in England, so it’s great having lakes and rivers if I have to be landlocked. It’s beautiful here and that’s what I need — beautiful landscapes.” 

Painting is Kingsley’s medium. She painted with oils for 20 years, and then she was inspired by Madison, Wis., artist Rick Ross who introduced her to the medium of cold wax, and she learned to add dimension to her paintings. 

 

 

Her creative process starts with day-to-day life, such as walking her dogs or gardening. “Something just captures my eye, and I try to connect to what I see and hear. I don’t take a photo. I take back a memory and from that point, I go one of two directions. Either I focus on one piece, or I visualize a collection of three to a dozen paintings.”

She enjoys working this way because it takes achieving perfection away from the one piece, and she can see each stage of each painting. “Each painting is a journey in itself.” 

Having obtained a studio, Kingsley has another dream now — one of combining the creation of art with therapy. “My most recent study has been on silence,” she explained. “In about two months’ time, I will graduate as a compassionate listener.” 

 

 

Besides being new on the BCS Art Tour, Kingsley sells pieces at the Viva Gallery in Viroqua, Wis., and at the annual Driftless Area Art Festival in Soldiers Grove, Wis. She opens her studio by appointment. Her paintings range in price from $10 to $2,000; follow GK Fine Art Paintings on Facebook and Instagram.

Seven Bridges Pottery

The “veteran” of the Art Tour is Mary Denzer, a transplant to Houston, Minn., full time since 1993. She has been making pottery since 1974, and her rural studio is located at 7246 Chisolm Rd., Houston.

Born and raised in St. Paul, Minn., Denzer then went to college and worked on the East Coast before venturing to Florence, Italy, where she met and married her late husband. The couple later landed in St. Paul where she apprenticed with a potter for two years.

Denzer admired the pottery of Bernard Leach and Shoji Hamada and began making that style of utilitarian pottery, winning awards over her 50-year career. The couple owned Front Porch Pottery on Grand Avenue in St. Paul, and they ran it for 20 years before moving to Houston. 

 

 

Denzer’s art ritual for pottery was learned from her late husband, which includes, “doing the same things, weighing it out. The time for throwing is very short. There is thinking, cleaning, rearranging tools, getting everything where it feels right before starting,” she said. 

Now she, along with her apprentice Delia Bell, creates rustic folk pottery that’s robust. It’s ovenproof, dishwasher safe and microwaveable. They also make some porcelain and decorative pieces, such as clocks.

Denzer’s designs are based on local flowers, trees, animals, birds and fish. The creative process “takes a long time,” she chuckles as she looks at her apprentice. “We have fun doing it.” 

 

 

Bell nods in agreement and says she likes working with pottery. “It’s the concept of taking something impermanent — mud, clay or earth — and with fire it becomes a very permanent thing. It lasts a long time. Pottery has been dug up from centuries ago.” Bell sells her own pottery during the tour, sharing her mom’s studio at Lanesboro Arts. 

 

 

Denzer says she keeps her prices “very reasonable, so people can come back each year and collect sets over time.” Prices range from $5 to $625 per piece.

Denzer opens her studio for two events a year, the BCS Art Tour in April and MeadowFest (in June). She also takes her wares to the Houston Arts Festival, sponsored by the Houston Arts Resource Council, and the Art Fair on the Green in La Crosse, Wis. You can contact Denzer by phone or email and follow her studio on Facebook.

2025 Bluff Country Studio Art Tour Details

The 2025 tour takes place Friday-Sunday, April 25-27. A list of all BCSAT artists, a map for self-guided tours and a list of food and lodging options can be found on the Bluff Country Studio Art Tour website. The website also indicates which studios are accessible or accessible with help. 

Support for the Art Tour is provided by the voters of Minnesota through a legislative appropriation from the arts & heritage fund, and River Arts Alliance.

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Contributor

Rose Korabek owns Korabek Ink & Edit, LLC based in southeast Minnesota. She is an award-winning storyteller who enjoys exploring culture, cuisine and landscapes. She has been a writer for the Rochester Post Bulletin and is a former editor of the Caledonia Argus. Her hobbies include reading, taking nature hikes, traveling and visiting farmers markets.

 

 

 

Root River Current’s coverage of the arts is made possible, in part, by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Southeastern Minnesota Arts Council thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts & cultural heritage fund.