This weekend sees the return of North Yorkshire Open Studios

He is now also of 108 artists taking part in this year’s North Yorkshire Open Studios (NYOS) this weekend and next; he will be throwing open the doors of his forge near Ripon for people to experience life as a blacksmith,

“I really don’t know what to expect,” says Crane. “I have never taken part before but sculptures and artistically designed gates and other functional art pieces are an area I really want to expand.”

Crane says he was just ten years old when he first saw a blacksmith at work and became fascinated by the process. “I suppose it’s little boys and fire,” he says, laughing.

He got a weekend job working for a blacksmith at the age of 14 and then when he left school worked full time helping to make railings and gates. He took over the Harrogate blacksmiths when his employer retired and now works from a forge in West Tanfield, Ripon.

He uses traditional blacksmithing methods for his restoration work which involves temperatures of up to 1500 degrees to fuse metal together.

“It’s a more time-consuming way of doing things, you would normally weld them together but that isn’t the way they would have done it in the 1800s so it’s not the way I am going to do it for this type of restoration work.”

Crane also makes bespoke sculptures including works for Harlow Carr gardens and intricate personalised pieces on commission.

North Yorkshire Open Studios, now in its 15th year, is an artist-run collective. There is a wide range of work on display including sculpture, painting, photography, ceramics, jewellery, textiles and mixed media.

“Because of the diversity, and in some cases remoteness, of artists who live and work in North Yorkshire, this initiative is incredibly valuable to celebrate their work,” says Anna Whitehouse, artist and project officer for NYOS. “We are championing North Yorkshire as a place for art, to discourage the traditional brain drain of talent to London. It’s a fun, interactive and adventurous way for people to engage with art.”

Like Crane, ceramicist Ros Walker is another of the artists who will be making their NYOS debut this weekend.

At her studio in Kirkham Abbey, she makes ceramics using local clay dug from her garden and the surrounding area.

“It is a really quite pure kind of terracotta clay which is prone to cracking on its own so I came up with the idea of adding plant fibres to it,” she says. “I make mostly non-functional, decorative, sculptural pieces with it. I have since found out that there was a pottery just up the road from here in Roman times which provided pots for a large part of the North of England and the clay I am using is from the same seam, so there is a real connection there.” Walker also makes stoneware pottery, large-scale mixed media works and two-dimensional paintings.

“My paintings are landscape-based and inspired by the countryside around here,” she says. “I use found objects and grasses so that they are ‘of the area and made of the area.’”

Over in Sheriff Hutton, sculptor Steve Page, also a first-time participant in the NYOS, carves sculptures out of stone and wood. A qualified counsellor, he has been able to give more time to his artwork since 2013 when he stepped down from his demanding full-time job running student services at York University.

“Sculpting has always been in the background for me,” he says. “I was given my first set of wood-carving chisels in my early teens, so I have always done a bit now and then.” He started carving in wood initially and then, after attending a stone-carving course at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park in 2015, he began making works in stone too.

“One of my first tutors was a former assistant of Henry Moore, so there is a Moore influence in my work – I like to include holes in some of my sculptures as it takes you through the material. And I want to make sculpture where the material is a big part of what people interact with rather than what I have done to it – I’d like people to step back and think about how ancient the rock is or how beautiful the wood grain is.”

As well as a forge, other interesting locations this year include artist David Beresford’s studio in Weeton which is built out of straw bales, painter Catriona Stewart’s studio based at Highfield Racing Stables in Norton and Lyndsey Tyson’s studio in Scarborough located in the former holiday home of the famous literary Sitwell family.

The event offers a platform for emerging and established artists working in different styles and materials. Justine Warner is a textile and mixed media artist based in the Howardian Hills, an area of Outstanding Natural Beauty which has inspired much of her work.

“The landscape around here is so beautiful; it is a little hidden gem of Yorkshire and it was when I moved here around six years ago that my interest in textile art really came to the forefront. I love looking at the patterns in the landscape.” A teacher of Design Technology Textiles and Food, Warner works at her sewing machine in her studio in the evenings and at weekends.

“The more I have practised, the more my work has developed – I would say it is more painterly now; there is layering and blending.” Recently she took part in Sky Arts’ Landscape Artist of the Year. “I was invited to apply for the show, because I think they are looking for people who have a different approach to landscapes, and I got through.” She travelled down to Compton Verney in Warwickshire. “It was a gift of a landscape and you had four hours to make a picture, I thoroughly enjoyed it. I just went to have an adventure really, but the reaction on social media has been amazing.” This is Warner’s fourth time taking part in NYOS and she says that it has been a key factor in her development as an artist. “It opened up opportunities and helped me to build relationships with other artists.”

Textile and paper artist Jo Yeates, who is based in York, discovered her creative side after taking a career break. “I was a solicitor in employment law for about 25 years but it got to a point where it was making me miserable, so I left the law although I didn’t really have a plan of what to do next,” she says. “I took a bit of time out and I went to an evening class on textiles – I was bitten by the bug and it took off from there. I like the tactility of textiles and the texture – there are so many possibilities.” She uses fabrics, threads, buttons, reclaimed items, paper and ephemera to make her mixed media pieces. She collects maps, types text to incorporate in her work on a vintage German typewriter and finds fabrics at charity shops and car boot sales. “I am largely self-taught and still learning and experimenting. I didn’t leave the law thinking ‘right I’m going to become an artist’ it just happened rather by accident. There is a lot less money in the bank account but I am very much happier and I have no regrets at all.”

For the artists involved in NYOS it is a chance to get their work in front of a wider audience as well as enabling them to discuss their processes and inspirations and to encourage others to try out their own creativity.

“I will be doing demonstrations and giving people the opportunity to do some hand-stitching,” says Yeates. “I am hoping that maybe someone might be inspired to become an accidental artist like myself.”

■ North Yorkshire Open Studios takes place over two weekends: June 4&5 and June 11&12. nyos.org.uk