Sidney Bolam
~ story and photos by Bob Gustin big Tolkien nerd.” And being of German heritage, she notes the woods of Brown County are not unlike the Bohemian forest in Germany.
Sidney and her husband Brenden King live at 4912 South Shore Drive in the Needmore area in northern Brown County, where her outdoor stone carving studio is also located. They have two children, Theo, 8, and Violet, 5.
She was born in Pittsburgh, but grew up in Lafayette, Indiana, and came to Indiana University to study art in 2002. Sidney discovered she loved being a student, earning a double major in fine arts and anthropology, plus minors in art history and Native American studies.
Stone carving was not her first foray into art. She was initially mostly a painter, doing portraits in oils and acrylics, plus doing illustrations for Native American coloring books published through IU.
But painting and illustration never touched her soul.“ I didn’ t feel like it was right for me,” Sidney says of painting.“ It never got me going.”
Sidney and Brenden have lived in Brown County for about 10 years now. As a young mother, her art took the form of crafting,
You know you’ ve arrived at Sidney Bolam’ s Bohemian Hobbit Studio when you see the“ Willie Nelson for President” sign on her fence. People of all political leanings live in northern Brown County, but no one has ever complained about the sign. Instead, they stop and take selfies with it.
It’ s not surprising that Sidney chose Willie. They’ re both renegades at heart, both a little unconventional, and both believe in the power of art.
For Sidney, that art expresses itself by transforming solid blocks of limestone into sometimes delicate, sometimes bold, but always soulful works of art. The hobbit part of her studio name refers to her diminutive size, and her choice to live as one with nature. The bohemian part acknowledges the rebel in her.
Her studio is part of the annual Back Roads of Brown County Studio Tour, a free, self-guided tour of 18 artist studios open to the public every day in October.
“ It’ s a humble little peaceful garden,” she said of her studio.“ It’ s a hobbity kind of place,” she said, referring to the book by J. R. R. Tolkien, who also wrote the Lord of the Rings trilogy.“ I’ m a
16 Our Brown County Sept./ Oct. 2017