Open Studios Fish Hoek & Clovelly

Chris Bladen is a South African sculptor known for his finely detailed bronze sculptures of fish and birds. An avid catch-and-release fly fisherman and keen birder based in Cape Town, Chris spends much of his time observing animals in their natural habitats. These encounters give him a deep understanding of movement, anatomy and character, which he brings into each sculpture. Working from sketches, photographs and careful study, Chris creates works that capture both the physical presence and spirit of his subjects. He is involved in every stage of the bronze-making process, from the initial sculpting and casting through to the final patina. Through his work, Chris hopes to inspire a deeper appreciation for the beauty, complexity and fragility of the natural world. Medium: Bronze Instagram: @chris_bladen_sculpture Website: chrisbladen.com Email: info@chrisbladen.com Studio Address: 6 First Avenue, Fish Hoek

Mandy Lake is a Cape Town-based artist whose painting practice captures the shifting, translucent character of the ocean. She holds a degree in History and Art History from the University of Cape Town and received formal training at the Foundation School of Art. After a successful career in design and illustration, Mandy turned her focus to oil painting. Her current work explores the complex abstraction of water surfaces. Through close observation, she translates the interplay of light, currents and iridescent movement into fluid forms. By focusing on these surface details, her paintings invite viewers into an immersive experience of the ocean’s depth, rhythm and energy. Mandy has exhibited widely in solo and group exhibitions, including Solstice Earth Song II at The Cape Gallery, Reimagine: World Ocean Day at Studio50, Quiet Wilderness and Held by the Sea at Noordhoek Art Point, and Abstract – Synchrony Revealed at the Jan Rupert Art Centre. Her solo exhibitions include Sheer Wat...

Kay Price-Lindsay is a Cape Town-based landscape artist who embraced a creative practice later in life. Following a successful 30-year career running a casting company in the film industry, Kay now balances her work as a Rapid Results coach with the freedom to explore her artistic practice. Primarily self-taught, she is currently enjoying the process of working with a limited, monochromatic palette using charcoal, raw umber oils and chalk pastels. Her work is inspired by the breathtaking, off-trail wilderness regions she has hiked through across Southern Africa. She captures remote and hard-to-reach landscapes - places that stir the imagination and make the heart sing. During a three-month journey through Europe, Kay is expanding her focus to include gentler, historic landscapes. She is finding new inspiration in coastlines, country lanes, meadows, rivers and forests. Kay has participated in two collaborative exhibitions at Studio Muse in Kalk Bay, as well as a solo exhibition tit...

Heidi Benn is a Cape Town-based mixed media artist with a background in Fashion Design and Fine Art. Her process-led practice brings together paper, natural yarn, hand stitching and ink. Rather than beginning with a fixed outcome, Heidi allows the materials to guide the work, responding to texture, tension, line and form as each piece develops. Her current body of work explores Touch and the histories carried through hands - what is learned, remembered, made and held. Working between fine art and textile traditions, Heidi creates quiet, tactile pieces that invite close looking and reward attention to detail. Heidi has exhibited in various group exhibitions across Cape Town since 2008. Her work has also been available at Willow & Co in the Chelsea Village Courtyard, Wynberg , since August 2025. Mediums: Paper, thread, natural yarn, embroidery and ink Instagram: @bennheidi1 Studio Address:  Mothership Studios, 16 Dunster Avenue, Fish Hoek

SUBMISSION CRITERIA FOR OSFHC 2026 Event dates FRI 9th, SAT 10th, SUN 11 th OCT 2026 10am to 4pm each day APPLICATIONS APPLICATIONS OPEN on Instagram and Facebook Sunday 1 March 2026. APPLICATIONS CLOSE Wednesday 1 April 2026 midnight. Notification of acceptance and invitation to join OSFHC 2026 will be emailed mid to end of April 2026. Defined by the mapped boundary lines of FISH HOEK and CLOVELLY. Must be engaged in a sustained and creative art practice. Applicants must demonstrate an active and evolving studio practice. Applicants must have a permanent studio space in the area or home work space. Open to artists and makers who create unique, handmade works within the creative arts, with a distinctive recognizable voice. Individual artists in the area may apply. No teaching institutions. COST Non-refundable application fee of R200: on receipt of yoco payment ...

Cathy Stanley is a colourist lured by playful and unconventional methods of making paintings and non-dominant hand line drawings. She uses paper fragments to describe emotive moments. If green thumbs could paint, Cathy uses hers to create vivid palettes of torn paper deftly manipulated by hand to form domestic and environmental paperpainting scenes that expand beyond our private spaces — a contemplation on the fragile connections surrounding us. Technique & Materials Using lightfast dyes to saturate the Vietnamese natural fibre paper in large-scale works, these fragments form the basis of these unique paintings with paper. Follow Cathy 📸 Instagram: @cathy.stanley

Kyoko Kimura Morgan is a Japanese paper artist and origami teacher living in Cape Town. She is the founder of Origami For Africa (OFA), a platform dedicated to using origami as a tool for creativity, connection, and transformation. Guided by the belief that meaningful change—social, emotional, and artistic—can begin with something as simple as a square of paper, Kyoko creates participatory art experiences that foster dialogue and agency across cultures and communities. Artistic Practice A unique element of Kyoko’s work is the fusion of Japanese cultural traditions with the natural beauty of Cape Town. This is expressed across a range of artmaking techniques, including ceramics, mosaics, embroidery, Boro (ボロ) mending, Yotsume Toji (四つ目綴じ) book-binding, and Sumie (墨絵) ink painting. Each piece reflects her commitment to collaboration, accessibility, and the power of handmade processes to bring people together. Kyoko also...

Gerda Smit, professionally known as O.Griet, is a fine artist and illustrator whose work brings together storytelling, sculpture, and the quiet beauty of everyday life. Trained in painting and ceramics at the Tshwane University of Technology, Gerda developed a distinctive visual language that combines technical skill with a deep sense of playfulness. Her academic thesis explored the childlike and naïve quality that many artists long for — an intentional unlearning in their process, where the focus shifts from polished outcomes to creating for the sake of expression and discovery. At the heart of her creative practice is a rich process that includes visual diary work, experimental drawings, and hand-built ceramic characters. These sculptural forms often emerge as companions to her illustrations, or as standalone artworks that give her stories a tangible, three-dimensional life. Between...

A Weekend of Art, Connection & Creativity. Mark your calendars! From Saturday 4 to Sunday 5 October 2025, Fish Hoek and Clovelly will come alive with creativity for the very first edition of Open Studios Fish Hoek & Clovelly (OSFHC). Expect a feast of creativity—from painting, ceramics, sculpture, and papermaking to illustration, textiles, mosaics, and much more. Explore 19 artists across 15 studio spaces, following four inspiring routes through the neighbourhoods of Clovelly, Fish Hoek Valley, Fish Hoek Mountainside and Risi View. Dates:  3–5 October 2025 Locations:  15 studios | 19 artists | 4 unique routes Cost:  Free entry all weekend Preview Day (Collectors & Enthusiasts):  Friday 3 October – R150 💬 Why OSFHC? “We’ve always admired Deep South Open Studios like those in Noordhoek and Kommetjie,” say the organisers. “Fish Hoek & Clovelly may have been known as a sleepy hollow, but that’s changing fast....

Sasha Scholtz originally studied Fine Art and then worked in the Commercial Art sector in Cape Town. She started, and supported, various small-scale creative art-related businesses before the teaching bug bit. She taught for many years in schools and to adult groups, whilst living in Eswatini, Franschhoek and Makhanda. After moving back to Cape Town, she set up a home art studio in Clovelly where she offers Art classes to adults and children: Creative Space - Clovelly. Her own art practice includes dabbling in all sorts of different media, usually using a multi-media, layering approach, mixing paint, collage and ink. Everyday Inspiration Landscapes , nature and still-lives of ordinary everyday things inspire her most of all. She finds time for her own creativity while attending regular art classes and is known to lug art materials around with her when on holiday in various places and spaces. 🖼️ Exhibi...

Marlise Keith (b. 1972) is known for her mixed media collages; large-scale drawings in pencil, ink and acrylics; and most recently, for her small sculptures of fabric, embroidery and found objects. Her subject matter is vast, drawing inspiration from a mental medley of horrific news headlines, colonial history, friends’ pets, psychopathology, girlhood memories, dreams, Pinterest , her persistent, chronic migraines, and roadside memorials . Subjects too daunting, too confused, or too subliminal to articulate in neat words and sentences, are processed through mark-making; offering an alternative “understanding” of a world that often does not make sense in traditional, logical language. This violence emerges in plentiful paint; sometimes it’s suggested by the very act of mark-making itself - paper is gouged, scratched, sanded, torn, folded , and nailed. Material Juxtapositions and the Question of Value The question of val...

Elizabeth Vels (born 1937-) is an esteemed South African artist who has held 14 solo exhibitions to date. She is one of South Africa's first papermakers as well as artist’s bookmakers, and has been since the late 1970's.  An early series of her artist’s books was bought by Jack Ginsberg, of The Jack Ginsberg Centre for Book Arts, within the envelope of Wits Art Museum.   She has multi-media artworks in both local and international collections, including Iziko and Anglo American, and was a guest artist at the Johannesburg Art Museum.   She was with the Goodman Gallery in Johannesburg for 15 years, under Linda Givon, where she had 5 solo exhibitions.   She studied at the Johannesburg College of Art and obtained a National Higher Diploma in Papermaking and Master’s Diploma in Technology. Thereafter she was a lecturer in Painting and Art History. Over the course of her five-decade career, Elizabeth Vels has immersed herself in papermaking and ...