For two weekends each fall, Austin’s artists open their doors and the city floods in. The studio tour tradition — born as the East Austin Studio Tour in 2003 under the nonprofit Big Medium, now spanning the whole city as the Austin Studio Tour — routes thousands of visitors through hundreds of studios, galleries and temporary spaces.
The joy is in the mix: internationally shown painters in warehouse studios, ceramicists in backyard workshops, printmakers, jewelers and installation artists in garages and galleries from East Cesar Chavez to the Canopy and Big Medium’s own east-side complex. Maps in hand, art lovers plan routes like generals and abandon them like poets at the first interesting doorway.
It’s the most democratic art event in Texas — free, self-guided, and the reason so many Austin living rooms wear original art.
