After spending a half an hour at Cathy Kiffney’s pottery studio nestled amid her wooded property on Hawk Ridge Road, it occurred to me that her decision to live there was directly related to the kind of artwork she created.Cathy Kiffney in her studio.

"Can you imagine if I lived downtown in a condo? How inspiring. But then – we wouldn’t have to do yardwork," Kiffney says.

 But it’s her time in her yard and out in nature where she gets inspiration for her ceramics, which cover the walls of the studio, the place where her husband, fine art painter Mark Brown also occupies a room. Kiffney is one of the artists you’ll meet on the 15^th Annual Orange County Open Studio Tour, scheduled to occur this weekend and next at various artist studios in the area.

 Kiffney is a life-long Chapel Hillian (she grew up in the Glenhill neighborhood), and she paints and shapes flat ceramic pieces into idealized nature scenes, art she produces at a prolific rate. The 200 pieces she has now were created in the last six months, and range in price from $20 to $2,000. Her free-form nature style is punctuated with lots of texture and color – and – as she pointed out while I was there, a lot of owls and rabbits this year.

 She admires owls for remaining unflustered by their world; rabbits for being both fast, and shy. Furthermore, says Kiffney, lowering her voice to a whisper: “Owls eat rabbits.”

 She grimaced.

 But all living things get along in her work, she adds.

 And here’s where you get a real peek inside her approach: It’s both whimsical and quirky, but with a subtle agenda. “There is a lot of nature that’s like that: beautiful and innocent and unfortunately, we are not taking care of that," she says.

 Meet Kiffney and the other artists on the tour. Find out how by clicking here.