Embarrassingly, for the first time since I moved to Austin, I attended the East Austin Studio Tour (I didn’t even know about it!).

Last weekend, artists who live or have a studio, in the huge area between I-35, Town Lake (a few just south of it), Highway 183, and E. Martin Luther King; opened up their studios for people to visit, check out their work, and purchase whatever they like. This is a lot of terrain to cover in just two days! Check out the map if you don’t beleive me. I had no idea there were over 150 art studios in town, much less just in the East Austin area. Amazing.

Read more for more, including some photos.

The art itself: Lack of variety was not a problem. There was just about anything you can imagine. From the not so great to the outstanding. Paintings, woodwork, furniture, metalwork, sculpture, pottery, photography, t-shirts, posters, silkscreening, ceramics, abstract, classic, everything. From the conservative to the ultra weird.

Also impressive were the studios themselves. Whenever you see an artist in a movie, the tend to have this expansive, incredible studio. All you can think is “how in the world can they afford something like that?”. Turns out it’s exactly like that. I couldn’t help but feel jealous. One studio had a kiln bigger than my kitchen, another even had it’s own greenhouse! Many of them had DJs playing electronic music, many had just a stereo playing out jazz or classic music. Most were offering food: coffee, hot chocolate, soup, conchas (I love conchas)…

Sadly, two full days of walking around and looking at art was not enough. We managed to conver only about 1/3 of the studios. This thing is just way too big. Looking forward to next year!

Below, a few photos: