Touring Burdickville’s art studios

Photo: Burdickville artists Carol and Joe Spaulding.

By Katie Dunn

Sun contributor

Art is often encountered in curated stillness—hushed in museums, framed behind velvet ropes, and stripped from the context of its making. But what happens when we encounter art at its source, in the textured, paint-splattered, light-filled rooms where imagination finds form?

In 1911, French Post-Impressionist artist Henri Matisse (1869-1954) offered one such answer with The Pink Studio (Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow), an iconic painting that immerses viewers in the interior of his atelier in Issy-les-Moulineaux. In that same year, Matisse followed with The Red Studio (Museum of Modern Art, New York), a bolder but equally introspective iteration. These companion pieces are not simply depictions of a room; they are invitations into the very atmosphere of creation. Both allow us to wander among unfinished sculptures, stretched canvases, and the suspended tension between inspiration and realization. Matisse was a master at collapsing the distance between artist and observer. He allowed the act of creation to feel present, proximate, and alive.

That same spirit—that of transparency, invitation, and intimacy—echoes right here in Leelanau County in the quiet corner of Burdickville. Along Bow, Lanham, and Fritz Roads, a small but vibrant community of artists has embarked on something extraordinary: opening the doors of their studios to the public. They have come together under the banner of the Burdickville Studio Tour—11 artists inviting visitors into the heart of their creative process over Memorial Day weekend.

Participating artists include Carol Spaulding (mixed media artist), Joe Spaulding (craftsman builder and painter), Nancy Miller (ceramicist), Mary O’Neill (self-anointed “opportunist artist”), Leah Dziewit (fiber artist), Carrie Betlyn-Eder (assemblage artist), Cynthia Greig (photo-video artist), Angela Josephine (musician), Nik Burkhart (painter), Tom Van Zoeren (local historic recorder), and Ty Maxon (musician).

The Burdickville Studio Tour demystifies the act of making. Designed to break down barriers between artist and audience, the event opens new avenues for dialogue, connection, and discovery.

The studio tour has its roots in the Lilac Fest, a small, homegrown event conceived by the Spauldings roughly 10 years ago. Each year over Memorial Day weekend—timed to the peak of lilac season, when Burdickville is at its most fragrant—the couple has opened their homestead on Lanham Road to the public. It began as an informal showcase of their artistry: Carol’s paintings and mixed media pieces, and Joe’s handcrafted woodwork and plein air landscapes. What started as a modest effort to share their work and to welcome neighbors into their creative world has now blossomed into something more.

“Our original Lilac Fest started about 10 years ago during the blooming of our lilac bushes which cover a significant border around our homestead, always the Saturday and Sunday of Memorial Day weekend. The Lilac Fests were essentially open studio events, plus utilizing the yard in front of our studios—much like a mini art fair. We would show Joe’s wooden cutting and serving boards, made from wood harvested from our property as well as his landscape paintings. In my studio I would show paintings and collages, plus things I like to make: wood assemblages, simple jewelry, small fabric items,” Carol said.

Joe brings decades of inventive exploration to the studio tour, spanning homebuilding, furniture design, painting, carving, and woodwork. His offerings will include richly grained serving boards made from storm-felled trees and plein air watercolors of Leelanau. He sees the Burdickville Studio Tour as an evolution, with more artists and wider social exposure.

“I think this year may be different than previous years because there are more artists and more social media stuff. So, we’ll see. It’s always fun and people are chill, so it’s good,” Joe said.

Burdickville artist, Betlyn-Eder began collaborating with the Spauldings in 2023, exhibiting her work at that year’s Lilac Fest. Since then, she has been instrumental in shaping and expanding this unique community endeavor.

“This began as Carol and Joe Spaulding’s Lilac Fest which brought friends and family together to celebrate the beauty of spring on their homestead and a chance to share their art and music. When Carol and I met a few years ago, she floated the idea of expanding it to include other very local artists. That year, only myself, Nancy Miller and Leah Dziewit joined in, but the kernel of developing something more grew…the Burdickville neighborhood is home to a surprising number of artists and we thought this year to extend the invitation to participate to all of them,” Beder said.

Betlyn-Eder’s home and studio are located on Bow Road, where she will open her doors to the public for the tour. Her practice includes assemblage, sculpture, and papier-mâché, often incorporating salvaged materials to explore themes of transformation and connectivity. Through recycling and upcycling, she reimagines discarded objects, stripping them of their original context to create pieces that are both striking and contemplative.

“My work grows out of an inherent instinct to scavenge and my fascination with connections, literal and imagined,” Betlyn-Eder explained.

Just down the road from Betlyn-Eder, Burkhart will present his distinct aesthetic. He works in graphite, charcoal, acrylic, and oil to create pieces that move fluidly between realism and abstraction, grounded in the landscape of northern Michigan. At the heart of Burkhart’s artistic practice is a persistent inquiry into how humans relate to nature, and how that relationship shapes our sense of place, history, and meaning. He envisions the Burdickville Studio Tour fostering authentic exchanges.

“I moved to this neighborhood four years ago and have been steadily discovering more artists and creative people since then…When I had a studio in an art center in Chicago, we had two open studio events a year and it brought a lot of energy to the creative community. It was also helpful to have a deadline to clean up my studio! The open studio event [in Chicago] was a way to connect with the other artists in the building and with a broader art audience. Similarly, I look forward to building a deeper sense of community here. I hope that visitors to my studio will enjoy themselves and come away with a better understanding of who I am as an artist,” Burkhart said.

Among the expressive voices in the studio tour is that of Van Zoeren, whose contribution is informed not by brush or clay, but by story, stewardship, and deep local knowledge. A former National Park Ranger with the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, he began recording oral histories with longtime residents of the park area, preserving their memories, narratives, and family photographs. Van Zoeren has framed some of these images in wood gathered from the region, constructing pieces that hold dual stories—one of the people pictured, and another of the trees that once stood in the surrounding landscape. He will also have copies of books, compiled from these oral histories and archival materials, available during the tour.

“I’ve selected a few favorites [photographs] to share in frames made from various sorts of local wood. Each picture says, in tiny lettering in a bottom corner, ‘Turn me over, please!’ On the backs, one finds a little bit about the photo subjects, and about the wood used in the frames, under the title, Neighbors of the Sleeping Bear—Human & Arboreal. The profits will be used to help protect the national lakeshore,” he said.

Another artist bringing fresh energy to the studio tour is O’Neill. She works with single-use, post-consumer plastic bags and packaging to create wall art, accessories, and wearable pieces. Recently, she has been experimenting with abstract designs using watercolor and marker.

“I think an event like this is a great way for people to get out and see some really beautiful art I’m honored that Carol asked me to be part of it,” she said.

While O’Neill plays with color, texture, and transformation through reclaimed materials, Greig brings a quiet, reflective lens to the tour. Operating primarily in photography and video, she focuses on overlooked spaces and subtle details that challenge how we see the familiar. Her latest body of work explores Leelanau County’s shifting agricultural landscape, shaped by memory, climate, and economic change.

“We as artists don’t live in a bubble. Like everyone, we respond to our environment—its rhythms, its beauty, its people, its terrain, its challenges. But maybe our paintings, drawings, photographs, sculptures, etcetera, offer a different perspective, one that shines a light on the things we otherwise take for granted so that we might see them anew—as if for the first time,” Greig said.

Yet another facet to this studio tour experience comes through the music of Maxon and Josephine, who will infuse Betlyn-Eder’s studio on Saturday and Sunday, respectively, with the soft textures of their acoustic guitars. The relationship between music and visual art has always been a naturally symbiotic one—each informing and enriching the other and deepening the sensory experience.

“In my experience, whenever mediums are combined an undeniable synergy happens. The art and music speak to each other, and that makes for a rich engagement for anyone present. At the least, wandering through a studio looking at art with live music in the background makes for an enjoyable way to spend an afternoon!” Josephine enthused.

By inviting the Leelanau community into their studios—spaces often seen as private or sacred—these local artists are doing more than showcasing their work. They are sharing a rare glimpse into the environments where art comes to life. It is a gesture of creative candor that dissolves traditional boundaries between maker and viewer.

This spirit of access and exchange places the Burdickville artists in the company of iconic figures who transformed their workspaces into public destinations: Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner’s farmhouse in Springs, New York, where canvases that once lined the floor now welcome visitors; Donald Judd’s SoHo loft, which merges studio and exhibition space; and Georgia O’Keeffe’s Abiquiú, New Mexico, compound, where the desert landscape itself became part of the experience. Like these sites, the studios of Burdickville invite us not only to see the art—but to feel its inception, and to take part in its ongoing story.

“There is nothing quite like seeing art truly up close and personal, particularly in the company of the maker. It’s an opportunity for questions an artist might never hear, and possibly it creates new answers. Our perspectives as artists, the why and how of the work, are often entirely different from those of the viewers, who bring their own experiences and beliefs to what they see. That kind of interaction doesn’t often happen once a work of art is hung in a gallery, removed from the artist,” Betlyn-Eder said.

The Burdickville Studio Tour runs Saturday and Sunday of Memorial Day weekend, May 24 and 25, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Navigating the route has been made easy, with ten studio markers guiding visitors along a loosely circular path. The participating studios are located in the general area of County Roads 616 and 675, making the tour both accessible and scenic. A logical place to begin is near the landmark French restaurant La Bécasse. There, visitors can orient themselves before setting out. With clearly marked signs and welcoming artists at each stop, the tour provides a relaxed, meandering way to experience the vibrant spirit of this unique community. Admission is free, and the aspiration is that the Burdickville Studio Tour will grow into a cultural mainstay.

“To me, this is a community-building project,” Spaulding noted. “As a group, we are very enthusiastic about continuing this tradition in the future.”