Portland Open Studios turns 26 this year. As an annual citywide open studio tour, we span many neighborhoods – in fact, the neighborhoods, or communities, are the core of who we are.  Each neighborhood is organized by volunteer community leaders, artists who juried into the event and have agreed to orchestrate meetups between artists in their community, and group promotion.

During the tour this year, on Oct. 12-13 and 19-20, from 10 am-4 pm, you can visit 95 artists in six different communities. The free tour guide is online at PortlandOpenStudios.com.

To get a flavor of this year’s tour, let us introduce you to our communities through our terrific community leaders.

NORTH

Includes: St. Johns, University Park, Kenton, Williams, and any other street labeled North.

When Abby Williams, Studio #5, graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design with a degree in illustration in 2004, she went the direction a lot of art students don’t go – tattoo artistry.

“The very first tattoo reality show was popular then,” she says, adding that the doors seemed to open more quickly than other art avenues for her.  “I thought ‘Maybe that could be a path for me.’”

That career brought the 43-year-old from the East Coast to Portland in 2014, and it was great for a long time, she says, until 2018, when “creative burnout and physical pain” got her contemplating her next move.   Abstract painting was her way out of the tattoo detail-oriented churn.  “I wanted to paint something for myself, and I didn’t want to paint anything even remotely figurative,” she says.

Since then, Williams’ paintings have come back to the illustrative detail she loved as a student, embodying strong archetypal women from fantasy, myth, and legend.  In the studio she shares will artist Sienne Cenere (also on the tour), she will be doing a gold leaf application demo each day of the tour.

“I am hoping to meet a lot of new people,” she says.  “The most important thing is the human connection I will be sharing in my studio, my sacred space.  I am really looking forward to that.”

NORTHEAST

Includes: Albina, Alberta, Alameda, Covey, Irvington, Mississippi, Cully, and other streets labeled NE.

Emily Pratt, Studio #34, has always loved collage, and collecting “old, weathered material in jars, making little shrines of rusty metal tins and such in my home.”

“One day, I just started cutting the tin into pieces, assembling them into two-dimensional metal collages,” she says.  And since then, her work has been a continuing evolution involving shears, hand protectors, hammers, and nails.

Besides working as an art teacher at Cleveland High School, Pratt has typically made her art in a group studio with other professional artists, eventually starting her own small collective out of a space she rented in Kerby Alley.  She also currently serves as a volunteer secretary on the Portland Open Studios board.

When COVID hit, she redid her garage into a studio, and she looks forward to welcoming visitors there for the third time during Portland Open Studios.  People should expect to see a lot of tin and weathered materials, she says, along with several series of work, including abstracts and abstracted landscapes and flower motifs she’s recently revisited.

“I really enjoy participating in Portland open studios because I’m in my own element and able to share my process as well as my pieces,” she says.  “It’s also such an amazing time to engage with fellow artists in my neighborhood and love talking to people and visiting and sharing my practice.  Portland Open Studios has allowed me to get the word out and share this unique medium.”

INNER SOUTHEAST

Includes:  Laurelhurst, Hazelwood, Mill Park. Kerns, Richmond, and South Tabor.

Cedar Lee, Studio #63, is probably best known as a painter of her namesake – trees, with her “Looking Up” series featuring forest scenes of sun shining through leaves.

But that is just one of the many series she continually revisits as a painter since she had her first show, at the public library in Asheville, NC when she was 16 years old.

“I started out introducing artworks in series as a way to help the viewer understand my artist brain,” she says. “But then my brain began organizing around those series, too.”

Lee continually moved around the country in the first half of her life, first as the child of hippy parents and then as a young military wife. She received a degree in studio art from Goucher College in Baltimore, MD before moving to the west coast in 2011. She and her family have lived in Portland for the past 9 years, where they have set down roots in the local community.

Besides the latest iterations of her tree series, visitors can expect to see work in her “Flora & Fauna” series, including a revisiting of her “Lotus” series of floral paintings in blues, a departure from its previous red tones.

“There is no end to the variations,” she says, laughing. “It’s a continuing process.”

OUTER SOUTHEAST

Includes:  Reed, Lents, Sellwood, Moreland, and Powell Hurst.

Up until three years ago, Jerry Svoboda, Studio #76, worked as a professional rigger for stop-motion films, from Coraline to Wendell and Wild.

“I had studied fine art in college and fell into film and animation to make a living and stay connected to the visual,” he says.

Since leaving that intense production life, Svoboda has returned to drawing and painting, working primarily with figures and landscapes. He gathers visual information for his compositions through figure drawing sessions at Hipbone Studios and out in nature.

“I use sketching from life as a basis for my finished paintings and drawings. As I revise and recall what I’ve captured in a sketch, I often become interested in visual ambiguity and unresolved stories that come up.” “I plan to display some of the sketches alongside the finished works so that visitors can get a sense of my process,” says Svoboda.

Over the winter of 2022-2023, Svoboda converted his small garage into a home studio. “I insulated everything and installed a small furnace. It’s so comfy now.”

NORTHWEST

Includes: Pearl District, Northwest Industrial, Nob Hill, Kings Heights, and Willamette Heights.

M. Aurora Oliva, Studio #80, wants to make sure that every visitor on the Portland Open Studio tour knows the importance of overcoming their fears of making that first mark or paint stroke. That’s why she’s setting up a large canvas in her studio and putting out paints and brushes for everyone to use.

“I am a pandemic artist, and painting gave back joy during a time of social isolation,” says the 50-year-old former non-profit professional. Self-taught, Oliva started playing with paint on index cards in 2021.

Art taught her discernment and to value what is important in life: “I chose a path that brings me alive, and I hope my art expresses that joy,” she says.

Oliva has since graduated from painting in her upstairs bathroom – “it had the best light in the house” – to a brief stint at Sequoia Gallery and Studios in Hillsboro and now to a shared studio in the Carton Services Building on NW Front Avenue where she can stretch into bigger works and be amongst creatives.

Painting gave Oliva a sense of fearlessness. “I want people to overcome that first hesitation in making a mark on a blank surface.  Don’t be afraid of making mistakes,” she says. “Everything can be painted over!”

SOUTHWEST

Includes: Sylvan Highlands, Goose Hollow, Bridlemile, Raleigh Hills, and Riverwood.

Meghan Paddock Farrell, Studio #93, has been fascinated by photography since she was a young child, inspired by her practicing photographer mother.

“The basement darkroom was this mysterious and alluring place that I always wanted to get into,” she says.  And from the moment she became a teen and was allowed into the darkroom, photography became an essential part of her practice, both personally and professionally.

These days, Farrell, age 47, does photography of all types, specializing in portraiture, and offering all the services in photography from retouching to promotional videos to product photography.

Visitors to her studio can expect to be offered the opportunity to sit for a photo portrait in her professional setup (the sitting fee is free, though digital and hard copies of the images will be available for charge).