PORT TOWNSEND — Thirty-eight artists, 30 stops, a multisensory experience: The 17th annual Art Port Townsend Studio Tour is not so unmanageable as you might expect.
So believes Melinda Bryden, organizer of the free tour, open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. this Saturday and Sunday.
Here’s an approach she recommends: Check out the inside-Port Townsend locations one day and do the outside-town ones on the other.
“This year, we have seven artists within two blocks on Water Street,” Bryden noted.
As for the out-of-towners, they’re within a 5-mile radius of one another.
Since there’s no admission charge at any of these studios, gasoline would be the one expense — along with purchasing a work of art to take home, of course.
This is beyond a gallery walk, though. Artists are set up to give demonstrations and discuss why they have chosen a particular form, be it bronze, watercolors, textiles or glass.
Children’s book illustrator, author and fine artist Richard Jesse Watson, for example, will show sketches, storyboards and studies at various stages of completion in his studio at 2305 Ivy St. in Port Townsend.
Like many of his fellow tour hosts, Watson will demonstrate his process.
The studio tour has newcomers, Bryden added: furniture builder Paul Kaase, photographer Dale Klein and painters Elisabeth Haight, Susan Faust, Mena Quilici, Shirley Rudolf and Mike Biskup are among the freshly added.
Artists are sharing space, so visitors have a chance to meet two or three at a stop. In Port Townsend, Bryden herself is sharing her Redfern-Designs studio with Lyn Faas at 1221 Woodland Drive; Haight and Evy Halvorsen are at 211 Taylor St.; James Jacobson and Don Tiller are at 839 Water St. and Quilici and Rudolf at 52 Buckhorn Place.
Out in Chimacum, Diana Cronin, Gail Hustedde and Klein are together at 1461 Egg and I Road.
Artists with years of tour experience are back this weekend too. They include photographer and poet Tony Porto and sculptor Chuck Iffland, whose Chimacum backyard is well-populated with wood and stone figures.
Maps and abundant information about the artists are found at ArtPortTownsend.org as well as at the Northwind Arts Center, 701 Water St. in downtown Port Townsend, where yet another art show, “Expressions Northwest,” is on display through Aug. 30.
For information offline, phone Northwind at 360-379-1086.
