Consider heading to the Prescott area over the first weekend of October for The Prescott Area Artist Studio Tour. Held from Oct. 4 to 6 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., this studio tour will showcase the work of 74 juried artists working out of 53 private studios and at four different art centers in the Prescott area. This is a chance to see where artists work and discuss their creations in a variety of mediums ranging from photography to ceramics. “One thing for me, and I also think for a lot of other artists, it’s just getting to talk to people. Art can be a very lonely thing. You’re creating on your own. But then when you have a show and something as exciting as the studio tour, you’re able to talk to the public so you get feedback on what you make and some good ideas,” says Lynn Schmitt, tour president and a jewelry maker who will be participating in the tour. “Artists get ideas. They feed off of the comments from the public.”
Although studio tours aren’t typically thought of as being family-friendly, Lynn says that parents and guardians are welcome to bring young ones. “Kids are fun because kids don’t have a lot of filters. So they ask all kinds of fun questions,” she says. Tours are self guided. Lynn advises checking out the website before you head out and seeing the artists whose work you like the most first. She told us there will be roughly 22 new artists on the tour this year. A full map listing where the artists are located will be published on prescottstudiotour.com so that visitors can check out the map ahead of time. The tour gives people a chance to develop a deeper relationship with art. “What we’ve done is make art accessible to everybody,” says Lynn. “One of the important things about the studio tour that sets us up a little bit different from other tours is we strongly push our artists to have demos. So that they’re actually working on their work when they sit down.”
“People like to know how the magic’s made, and I think that’s what intrigues them and what gets them to go to the tour,” she says. “If you walk into a gallery, you see all this stuff. But you have no idea who makes it or how it’s made.” − Teresa K. Traverse
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