For two weekends each November, Austin’s artists throw open their studio doors and the city becomes a gallery with a thousand rooms. The East Austin Studio Tour, produced by the nonprofit Big Medium since 2003, is the happiest homework art lovers ever get.
Hundreds of painters, sculptors, ceramicists, printmakers and jewelers welcome visitors into the garages, warehouses and garden studios where the work actually happens. You watch a potter at the wheel, ask a painter about that blue, and leave with art whose maker you now know by name.
Big Medium champions Austin’s visual artists year-round with exhibitions, the Texas Biennial and support for the creative community that made the city’s reputation. Its west-side sibling tour spreads the same joy across the river each year.
Happy City News plans its route with a map, a bike and an empty tote bag. The tote never comes home empty.
