portland studio tour

111 artists will open their doors for Portland Open Studios’ 25th anniversary

Portland open studios gives local artists a chance to connect with their communities during the second and third weekends in october..

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Oil painter Trifon Markov of Southeast Portland is a participating artist for the 2023 event.

Photo courtesy of Portland Open Studios

Portland’s largest and longest-running citywide art studio tour returns this month for its 25th anniversary. During the second and third weekends of October each year, Portland Open Studios gives 100+ local artists the opportunity to open their workspaces to the public and “bridge the gap between artist and patron.”

This year’s event takes place Oct. 14-15, and Oct. 21-22, and features 111 participating artists across the metro area, from St. Johns to Oregon City. Artists are juried in by a professional panel — only the top 70% are accepted to join Portland Open Studios.

Founded by artists, for artists

Portland Open Studios began in 1998 with a group of artists who wanted to showcase their work and engage their communities. Today, the tour attracts thousands of people and supports local artists through workshops, training sessions, and educational internships for students. Scholarships are also awarded to emerging artists and historically marginalized artists to help cover the tour’s participation fees and provide ongoing support with customized professional development courses.

“There is no better way to see the incredible creativity that is Portland than in the studios and workspaces of the artists themselves,” said Kirista Trask, the organization’s executive director.

Photo of Gesine Kratzner courtesy of Portland Open Studios

What to expect

The annual tour is self-guided and participating studios are open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. each weekend. You can search for artists by neighborhood or by name (the latter option lets you filter your search by the type of media you’re interested in seeing, like ceramic, oil, photography, etc.). There’s also a handy virtual map you can use to plot your route, or you can pick up a limited edition commemorative guide for $10 at studios No. 9, 13, 39, 40, 47, 78, 101, and 114.

Love Portland Open Studios and want to bask in the post-tour afterglow? Join the organization at its 25th anniversary party on Thursday, Nov. 16, at The Village Ballroom. Tickets are $35.

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Portland Open Studios Tour 2021

MASKS ARE REQUIRED IN ALL STUDIOS Everyone is required to wear an approved face covering while entering any artist studio on the tour, whether vaccinated or unvaccinated.

HANDWASHING OR SANITIZING STATIONS WILL BE AVAILABLE AT THE ENTRANCE OF ALL STUDIOS

STUDIOS WILL LIMIT THE NUMBERS OF VISITORS AT ANY ONE TIME TO ALLOW SAFE SOCIAL DISTANCING This varies depending upon the size of the studio

THE TOUR GUIDE WILL BE COMPLETELY ONLINE THIS YEAR, WITH NO PRINTED MATERIALS, TO REDUCE UNNECESSARY SURFACE CONTACT.  

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Portland Open Studios

Visit artists at work during the 25th annual Portland Open Studios Tour Saturday and Sunday, October 14-15 and October 21-22. Explore the artists are in your neighborhood (and beyond) during Portland’s oldest and largest art studio tour. 112 artists will be in their studios throughout greater Portland, marked with distinctive yellow and black signs. This year the tour has been split into seven distinct communities to make organizing your visits easier. SE Portland is divided into inner, an area from the Willamette river east to SE 85th Ave. and I-84 south to Powell Blvd., and outer, from the river east to I-205 and south of Powell Blvd. to Milwaukie. A contactless tour guide can be found on their website, portlandopenstudios.com , with complete artist information. “25 years ago, Portland Open Studios started as an artist-led initiative to connect the Portland community with the artists who live and work here. There is no better way to see the incredible creativity that is Portland than in the studios and workspaces of the artists themselves,” says Kirista Trask, executive director. It is the mission of Portland Open Studios to be an essential component in the Portland art community by prioritizing artists and their professional development. Free and open to the public, the event runs 10 am-5 pm each of the four days. Artists are juried in by a professional panel, with only the top 70 percent being accepted.

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Open Studio Tours – Portland and Seattle

Please join us at one or both of the upcoming Open Studio Tours this fall! Guild members and artists skilled in fusing, blowing, stained glass, casting, jewelry, mosaic, and other art forms will have artwork available to purchase, along with demonstrations at some sites. Many of the studios are not normally open to the public, so don’t miss your chance to get a little peek into where the magic happens. Meet the artists, learn about their creative process, and find unique and beautiful items for sale. Get a head start on your holiday shopping list or buy something fabulous for yourself! Tours take place rain or shine.

Visitor enjoying the artwork at Marvelous Mosaic Fine Art Studio in Deer Island OR. It’s in an old schoolhouse: see the marvelous art and the great space where they host weekend glass retreats.

Portland/Vancouver area: Sept. 30 – Oct.1 from 11:00 am – 5:00 pm

The PNW Glass Guild Open Studios Tour features 23 artists at 9 sites in the area. Print out the flyer and map to plan your visit. Be sure to complete the form to enter a drawing for a $50 credit towards a piece of artwork. Print out or pick up a flyer at your first site and get it signed by 6 participating artists from at least 4 different sites. Drop off the signed flyer at the last site you visit and you will be contacted about a week later if you are the lucky winner!

Please print and share the flyer and the locations map to help us generate publicity :

or share the event link: https://www.pnwglassguild.org/event/portland-open-studios-23/

Participating member artists include:

1 ) Marvelous Mosaic Fine Art IS NOT ABLE TO PARTICIPATE

2 ) Shirley Bishop 36311 SE 3rd Circle, Washougal WA Guests: Gail Haskett , Kate Nicklos, Linda Roman

3 ) Evan Burnette 866 N Columbia Blvd, Portland OR

4 ) Lyn Kennison 6644 NE 22 Ave, Portland OR Guests: Lesley Kelly, Sondra Radcliffe , Margie Rieff

5 ) Rosalind Cooper 14795 SW Kilchis Street, Beaverton OR

6 ) Linda Gerrard 8400 SW Maverick Terrace, Beaverton OR Guest: Dianne Muhly

7 ) Margaret Eagle 17380 SW Hillsboro Hwy, Sherwood OR

8 ) Carlyne Lynch 6890 Molalla Bend Road, Wilsonville OR Guests: Rose McBride , Greta Schneider

9 ) Mitzi Kugler 4970 Bonnet Dr, West Linn OR

Here’s a link to the Google Map

North Seattle: October 14 – 15 from 10:00 am – 5:00 pm

Purchase items to enliven and beautify your home at the Glass and Decor Studio Tour and Sale from more than 20 artists at 6 sites in north Seattle. Glass, ceramic, wood, and mixed media artists will be present. Most sites have demos of some sort explaining how the art is made.

You will also have a chance to win a piece of art at each site you visit. Simply fill out the form at each site at which you want to enter that site’s drawing. Each site will contact their lucky winner on Sunday at 5:00 pm and make arrangements for you to pick up your prize. Our Glass And Decor Studio Tour is part of Refract , the Seattle area’s 4-day celebration of glass.

See GlassAndDecor.com for more information or to print out the map to plan your visit.

Participating PNW Glass Guild member artists include:

1) Charles Friedman 2841 NW 70th St

2) Blowing Sands Studio/David Smith 5805 14th Ave NW

3) Karen Seymour 5415 Greenwood Ave N Guests: Lael Bennett , Kathy Johnson , Debbie Marchione

4) Janiene Fitzpatrick 204 N 73rd St

5) Fred Buxton & Sandy Spear 7001 Roosevelt Wy NE

6) Bridget Culligan 5419 Kensington Pl N

Here are a few images from previous tours to whet your appetite.

Mitzi Kugler showing her torch-working and fusing artistry in her West Linn OR studio

Carlyne Lynch’s Wilsonville OR studio will have both colorful art and fun projects for you

Margaret Eagle’s Sherwood OR studio is in an old stable that gives lots of room to look at glass.

Linda Gerarrd shows visitors the backroom of her Beaverton OR Studio where the magic happens.

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MEET THE AWARD-WINNING ARTISTS OF PORTLAND OPEN STUDIOS

Presented by Portland Open Studios What’s This? August 19, 2022

Portland’s oldest and largest art studio tour is this October!  Visit 117 artists in their studios in many neighborhoods in greater Portland (find our contactless tour guide at www.portlandopenstudios.com ).   You can get a peek into how an artist works, ask questions, and tour the many creative micro-businesses in your own and other neighborhoods.

This year, we’d like to introduce you to our accomplished scholarship winners – of the Kimberly Gales Emerging Artist (age 20-30) Scholarship , and the newly established Molly Cliff Hilts Scholarship for Historically Marginalized Artists .  These artists scored highest with our jury panel, and we know they’ll score high with you, too, so don’t miss them on the tour.

MOLLY CLIFF HILTS SCHOLARS

Linda Sawaya, working in her studio on a ceramics piece

Linda Dalal Sawaya , Studio #14, was born in LA, the youngest of five children, from Lebanese immigrants who made creating art central to family life.  “My mother and my grandmother were craftswomen,” she says, “my dad was a photographer … My grandfather was a Renaissance man – a doctor who spoke eight languages and created eclectic collaged journals.” So inspired, Sawaya says she has done many art forms:  ceramics, collaging, painting and sculpture.  She wrote, photographed and designed her own Lebanese cookbook, too.  You will find ALL these influences in her studio during the 2022 tour.

After earning an Environmental Design degree from UCLA, Sawaya says it was the rain that caused her to eventually move north to Portland – quite literally.  “I actually got a job at a magazine called RAIN: The Journal of Appropriate Technology, in 1977.  It covered solar, wind and geothermal power, recycling and beyond.”

Linda Sawaya says she loves working in all mediums.

Since then, she’s worked as a creative –teaching art in schools or her studio, doing graphic design, illustrating children’s books, and painting murals, among other things. Her family connections are also extremely cherished influences.  Her work continues to evolve, too.

“When people ask when I will retire, my response is ‘Artists never retire’,” she says, “This is what we love to do.”

Cole Reed describes herself as an artist that can’t create “inside the box” 

Cole Reed ,  studio #55, is a true Renaissance woman.  She has a dimensional mind and a career with art woven through everything she does.  Whether it’s industrial design, running a gallery, running the anti-racism non-profit she’s founded, running a co-working facility, building sculptures, designing indoor and outdoor spaces, or burning wood reliefs, among other things, she is constantly creating.   The difference, now?

“I am no longer a businesswoman who does art,” she says.  “I’m an artist who does business. And the business is the business of making change.”

Reed, who was born in Chicago and studied in Arizona and California, moved with her business partner, Day, to Portland because Oregon offers same-sex adoption (she has three kids now). She and Day ran Greenhaus Gallery, representing BIPOC artists, on MLK Avenue for ten years.  Increasingly hateful, racist actions against the gallery and Reed herself caused them to close the gallery in 2022 and pursue what Reed calls “gangster of joy.” (it’s on all her business cards)

Cole Reed’s studio workspace

To combat the racism she experiences in Portland, she founded Exit the Maze , with the goal of exposing the invisible tentacles of racism by creating and energizing a diverse community of engaged leaders.  For Cole, building community around creating art is an essential part of any healing process. (She’ll host two other open studio artists at her space this year).

“I want to bring education and mental health using art,” she says.  “I’m a neurodivergent artist and designer, I cannot think inside the box.”

Tieara Meyers displays some of her acrylic pours.

Tieara Myers , studio #30, balances her abstract painting career and practice with work as an event planner and psychic meditation teacher.  Her art, she says, “is not about complicated patterns.  It’s symbols, colours and shapes.  I want it to be easy and I want it to be fun.”   Circles feature prominently in her work, which she says symbolize both beginning and completion and are made with everything from jar lids to pizza pans.  “My circles are never perfect,” she says.  “Intentionally like everyday life.” 

Tieara Meyers has transformed her entire one-bedroom apartment into an art studio.  Here, she works at the kitchen counter demoing one of her painting processes.

Myers, who moved from Chicago to Portland two years ago, says she’s always created and made things with her hands.  It was acrylic pours that first attracted her to paint, because “you don’t know what’s going to happen,” she says.  And now her apartment is also her studio, with art supplies spilling out from every corner of the space.

“Color has a deep impact on me and is an integral part of my daily meditation practice and teaching. It pulls from each person something different - because the color will have a personal meaning for everyone,” she says. 

“It’s interesting to see how your art changes as you change,” she observes.  “I went through a phase where I was hiding in my life.   My artwork at that time was darker and more subdued. But now, as a creative, I’m really going for it, so pink and gold are now the colours I turn to most often.”

KIMBERLY GALES EMERGING ARTIST SCHOLARS

Elizabeth Fennelly displays one of her tintypes – contemporary photos printed on tin.

Elizabeth Fennelly , Studio #21, may be an emerging artist – but her medium, tintype photography, is centuries old. 

“I know, I know,” she laughs, “I’m young and my medium is really, really old. But I can’t help it, I love old processes.”

Elizabeth Fennelly pulls a tintype from a developing solution in her studio.

The Beaverton native said she was drawn to wet plate work, an alternative, hand-made process, when she got her arts degree from the School of Visual Arts in New York, graduating in 2015, and returning to the area in 2018.

“I loved silk screen painting, photography, things where I had to use my hands to make things come alive,” she said.

Visitors to Fennelly’s North Portland will get to experience the process, by getting a tintype photo taken in front of her big, old-school camera and watching the tintype develop in the different solutions.  For a fee, they can own the tintype.

Zach McRae with his son, baby Julian, a frequent studio visitor. 

Zachary McRae ,  Studio #82, describes himself as a self-taught artist who moved from drawing to abstract painting, using primarily acrylic and oil and big brushes to create his intuitive works.

He began to take art seriously, he said, while on a study abroad program in Tokyo, Japan in his early twenties. 

“I found myself putting myself into dangerous situations several times,” he said.  “In the last one, I woke up with a broken nose after falling off a bicycle. I suffered memory loss from the combined result of a concussion and overconsumption of alcohol.   Let’s just say it was a wake-up call for me to direct my energy to something I could be proud of.”

Zach McRae’s studio is in the apartment he shares just off SE Belmont with his family.

McRae has lived around the country, and is new to Portland – he moved here from New York with his wife, Kaila, in 2020, and they’ve since had a baby, Julian.     He’s currently getting a master’s in education, works as a substitute teacher, and paints out of his home studio.

“I’m really looking forward to meeting other artists and art patrons,” he says.   “Moving here during the pandemic has slowed that process down.”

News & Notes: It’s Open Studios time

• October 5, 2022

For some people, the official greeting of October is a pumpkin spice latte. For some it’s college football, or the baseball playoffs and the World Series. For some it’s all those autumn leaves. For some it’s time to get serious about election season, or gearing up for Halloween.

And for a lot of people, October means it’s Open Studios Season. In the past couple of decades or more the open studios movement has swept the nation, and for good reason. It allows art followers to visit local studios and peek behind the curtain to see works in progress, and it allows artists to meet interested potential buyers and make some sales straight out of their studios. For artists without gallery representation it offers a chance to gain exposure, make themselves known, and sell some art. For people who find the gallery scene intimidating, it’s an excellent way to break down barriers, get a sense of the process of artmaking, and discover some artists whose work appeals to them. And for most everyone, spending a day dropping in on a variety of studios is just a lot of fun.

Portland Open Studios , the biggest in the state, opens its 24th season this weekend as 118 artists open their doors to visitors: dates are Oct. 8-9 and Oct. 15-16. You can see work in just about any medium you can think of, from acrylics to wood, and decide where you’d like to visit just about any way you’d like — by artist, or medium, or particular neighborhood: maps of where the studios are by neighborhood are here .

Several other open-studio tours re coming up soon, too. A few to watch for:

• Yamhill County Art Harvest Studio Tour . This year’s tour in Willamette Valley wine company opened in late September and continues Oct. 7-9. For a good sense of the flavor of a typical studio tour, see David Bates’s ArtsWatch story about the Yamhill tour.
• Washington County Open Studios . The tour of 45 locations in the suburban and rural county west of Portland will be Oct. 15-16.
• Ashland Open Studio Tour . More than 20 Southern Oregon artists will open their studios for this ninth annual tour, Oct. 15-16.
• Philomath Open Studios . Twenty-one artists in and around the Benton County town west of Corvallis will show their work at 10 locations, Oct. 22-23 and Oct. 29-30.
• Clark County Open Studios Tour . Across the Columbia River in Washington state, 50 artists in Vancouver and smaller cities and rural areas in Clark County will open their doors to visitors Nov. 5-6.
• Washougal Studio Artists Holiday Art Market . Getting a jump on the holidays, 15 artists will show their work at five studios in the Clark County, Washington town; Nov. 12-13.

Other communities in and around Oregon also hold open studios tours at other times of the year. Astoria’s is in late July, the tour in Damascus is in May, and the Columbia Gorge tour is in April.

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Photo Joe Cantrell

Bob Hicks has been covering arts and culture in the Pacific Northwest since 1978, including 25 years at The Oregonian . Among his art books are Kazuyuki Ohtsu;   James B. Thompson: Fragments in Time;  and Beth Van Hoesen: Fauna and Flora . His work has appeared in American Theatre, Biblio, Professional Artist, Northwest Passage, Art Scatter, and elsewhere. He also writes the daily art-history series "Today I Am."

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Benjamin Posin

By expressing myself through wearable works of art, I'm able to bridge the gap between thought and reality. My passion for creating goes back to my early childhood as far as I can remember. Reconstructing and repurposing broken and unwanted items. After decades of trial and error, failures and triumphs, I have honed in my skills and style. Using natural materials, precious metals and gemstones. Each step requires my full presence, with no room for error. It's like I'm transported to my own special place where I can fully be me in every essence. Each detail is of the utmost importance and there's a part of me that goes into everything I create.

My ethos is the quality of ones craft comes from the love for the details and the passion for the product.

Address: 2516 NW 29th Ave, suite.15 Portland, OR 97210 

Jewelry Community: NW Portland Studio Number: 85 Email:  [email protected] Website Facebook Instagram

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