The Smelter City gets a view of the scenery 'Down Under'

The Copper Village Museum and Arts Center is well known for bringing artists to the Smelter City by providing them with a venue to showcase a wide variety of work, and this month the talent came all the way from “Down Under.”

Don Pearce and Belle Stewart, a father-daughter duo, have filled every wall of the museum’s exhibit space with their breathtaking work. Pearce’s paintings depict the different landscapes of Australia, while Stewart’s art features her hand-painted, photo-edited masterpieces.

“I always wanted to show my dad’s art here in America,” Stewart said in her unmistakably Australian accent. “I was looking for products to go with my dad’s art and I was going to employ someone to make scarves or bags or something, and that’s how it started.”

The “it” that she’s referring to is her own work, which was produced combining her background in graphic arts, and her exceptional eye for patterned flowers that come to life on everything from greeting cards and gift tags, to high quality wallpaper – or that’s the goal anyway.

“I was fourth generation in a big old farmhouse and we were always doing art, and so all this stuff is from my childhood – my sister and mom, it’s an extension of that stuff,” she said.

She has knowledge and experience in surface painting design and the gallery is featuring her very first pieces. The process is fairly simple: she draws the images on her iPad by hand using Adobe Illustrator, then mass produces the art into beautiful and functional digitized pieces. She hopes to add wallpaper to the list, however, it can be very time consuming, she explained, pointing to a large framed picture on the wall saying that it took her three months to complete the project.

But don’t be mistaken, this isn’t exactly “new hat” for the multi-talented artist, who has been making art for large companies in Australia for quite some time now. 

“I have like hundreds of ideas, I just haven’t had time to do anything with it. So, my dad’s art is taking up probably 75 percent of the time,” she laughed.

Displayed on the wall is a hand-drawn map of Australia she made with marked locations depicting Pearce’s diversity of paintings, which were produced for the purpose of capturing the continent’s diverse terrains.

“We call this 'Exhibition Australia,'” she said, motioning to the multiple walls lined with her father’s artwork. 

“It’s 10 years – it starts in 2014, and I was actually working in this town,” she said, pointing to Canowindra, “when I first started talking to my husband. I was working for the newspaper there.”

Stewart isn’t a stranger to the Smelter City, as her husband is Michael Weber, whose parents, Dr. Jack and Fay Weber, are from Anaconda, and she and her husband visit Anaconda every summer. Michael provided the music for the art event in fact, with accompaniment from Michael Walker.

Stewart has taken a particular liking to Anaconda because she stated that it feels a lot like Australia. When asked if there were any specific paintings that are special, she pulled out a print of Silverton, where she explained the original “Mad Max” movie was filmed.

“And I think that’s really interesting. These other places like this are where my dad and I have cheese on toast,” she explained, going down the line of pictures on the wall. “So these places are really dear to me.”

Be sure to hurry down to Copper Village Museum and Arts Center at 401 E. Commercial Ave., as Pearce and Stewart’s exhibit, which opened in August, concludes on Friday, Sept. 6.