Gateway Studio Tour Set For Biggest Year Yet

This Saturday, lace up your best walking shoes and be sure to be in the mood for some art. Why? Because if you live anywhere near Hyattsville, Mount Rainier, Brentwood or North Brentwood you'll be up to your ears in it. That's right, it's the eighth Gateway Arts District Open Studio Tour. 

The event will feature more than 120 artist studios open for public perusal. You can plan your trip with the map above as well as download and print out a map to take with you as you explore the Gateway corridor arts scene.

The multi-city event runs from noon to 5 p.m. on Saturday, May 12.

Highlights on this year's tour include the 39th Street Gallery in Brentwood. That gallery will be hosting the reception for Love, Loss and Lipstick, a collaboration between two Virginia-based (we won't hold that against them) artists Taliaferro Logan and Caryl Burtner. The reception runs from 5:30 to 8 p.m. 

Eric Hope, blogging on East City Art, produced this excellent preview of the show. 

"The modus operandi of each artist is strikingly similar.  Visitors walking into the gallery are bombarded by multiple series of small-scale works, each methodically hung in groups of cohesive vignettes that when taken together paint a nostalgic portrait of emotional moments long since past.  Integral to each artist is the use of found objects and materials as totemic emblems within each small-scale work." - Eric Hope, East City Art

In perhaps its most active involvement in the studio tour to date, the Mount Rainier Artists' Lofts will also be open to the public.

There will also be two guided bus tours, at 1 p.m. and 3:30 p.m., available to take you from spot to spot. You'll be able to sign up for a seat on the tour bus at the Gateway Arts Center in Brentwood, but tour-goers are encouraged to reserve their seats by emailing Kristus Ratliff (address in link).