This April, two towns in the greater Austin area will host art studio tours, allowing dozens of local artists to share their work with the public. To the north, Taylor will host its second annual studio tour. And down south, San Marcos will continue its tour tradition.
Heading into its third year, the San Marcos Studio Tour will be bigger and better than its creators expected. “It was kind of an accident,” says co-creator Jacqueline Overby. “The first year we weren't expecting it to be as successful as it was, and I think just the feedback from the community has just been overwhelmingly supportive.”
Overby says she and the studio tour team felt they had to expand this year’s event to two weekends instead of just one. “I think that that was just some of the feedback that we got last year,” she says. “A lot of our participants felt as if it was too short.”
In Taylor, where the tour will be confined to just one weekend, organizer Cindy Chapter says year two was always part of the plan. “When I decided to do the tour [last year], I knew that things take a while to take off, so I planned – unless it was a complete flop – to do three years at minimum,” she says. “I was trying to commit to something to build our community.”
Luckily, the first Taylor Studio Tour was not a flop, complete or otherwise. “It went really good,” Chapter says. “we had way more people show up than we expected.” Chapter says year one had more participation than she expected from audiences and from the artists themselves. “I knew there were some artists in Taylor,” she says, “but there ended up being a lot more than I knew about.”
Down in San Marcos, Bekah Porter has had a different role in all three studio tours. “First year of the studio tour, I was on the tour as an artist,” she says. “Second year, I was an intern through Texas State. Third year, I'm number two, baby! Let's go!”
As ‘number two,’ (real title: assistant director), Porter is excited to help create this year’s expanded version of the San Marcos Studio Tour, and also to participate once again as an exhibiting artist. “For this year, [I’m] hosting my studio again, probably for the last year because I really wanna go into just production,” Porter says, “but I'm doing a carnival. So I'm gonna have my clown friends come do art stuff. So just making the most of it, doing what I want. And that's the opportunity you have at the studio tour – you can just put up some paintings or you can have a whole interactive installation.”
“I’m glad that you’re going all out like that,” Overby says. “It’s gonna… show other people what’s possible.”
While San Marcos is going bigger – “It reaches from Wimberley to Lockhart on both ends of our map and then San Marcos is in the middle,” Overby says – Taylor is keeping their footprint a little more compact, in keeping with the size of the town.
“You can walk to most of it,” Chapter says. “It's actually not a far walk between Old Taylor High and downtown,” where much of the art will be shown.
“For the studios and people's houses, it's probably more of a drive-to-it, but anything downtown or Old Taylor High, you can just park your car and take a walk around,” she says. “The town's beautiful and I think it's gonna be a really nice weekend. We have maps and people… can go check out peoples’ home studios. And other artists are showing their work in local venues, stores, things like that. All the coffee shops have some artists and the bookstore has an artist and even the little corner grocery store has artists showing their work.”
San Marcos is also seeing a lot of community engagement, Overby says. “One of the things I'm really excited about this year is that we're collaborating with the city on a one-day San Marcos Arts Fest that they're doing in their downtown district, the second weekend, Saturday, April 12th,” she says. “And there are a lot of self-starters that are coming out and joining the efforts and we have a lot of people that are doing their own little events and activations and they're all kind of coming together underneath the umbrella. We have a lot of people that have signed up for like a gallery bike ride, an encaustic demo. There's a couple other late night events… like mural jams and yeah, it's just nice that I think people are really kind of understanding what it is now. I think the first year, there was a little bit of unfamiliarity, but they're really embracing it this year.”
The Taylor Studio Tour is April 5-6
The San Marcos Studio Tour is April 5-6 and 12 - 13, with a kickoff party on Friday, April 4.
