ARTISTS from both sides of the River Tamar will be exhibiting at the Drawn to the Valley Summer Exhibition in Tavistock Town Hall this month.

The exhibition will be opened on Tuesday, August 18 at 7pm by Henrietta, Duchess of Bedford, whose family seat is Woburn Abbey. For hundreds of years her family has retained close links with Tavistock and the Tamar Valley.

The duchess is an internationally renowned horse-racing expert and lover of the arts. She was a leading fashion model and also one of the last debutantes to be presented at Court.

Drawn to the Valley is a showcase of very varied work, including jewellery, textiles, sculpture, wood and metal, and paintings in oil, acrylic, watercolour and mixed media, etchings and other types of print.

It is a 'taster' for the feast of interesting art work available through the Tamar Valley, more of which can be seen in the first week of September during the Drawn to the Valley artists' Open Studios event.

The Drawn to the Valley group formed in 2004, in the wake of the Foot and Mouth crisis, and now has a 140 members. There are ceramicists, metal and wood designers, sculptors, printmakers and textile artists, as well as painters and jewellers.

The artists contribute to the regeneration of the local economy by selling their work at exhibitions and their annual Open Studios event.

Largely self-funded, the Drawn to the Valley Group is run by the artists themselves as volunteers, with a part-time paid co-ordinator and some local sponsorship.

The work of 64 artists will be on display for a week, from August 19 to 25, from 10am to 5pm every day except Sunday, when it will close at 2pm.