Participating in a recent open studio tour cost me buckets of cash, three weeks of prep time, edgy times in my own house and almost zero sales.
And now, a week later, I’m scratching my head, “Was it really worth it? All that piss and vinegar and upset? Busted corner moldings and household ambience in the toilet for a full week or more?”
Well, yes, it was worth it and I’ll likely do it again next year (I’ve already begun inviting people). The equation isn't a simple one and the bargain isn’t for everyone. An understanding, patient and tolerant wife is de reguir (Thank you again, Eileen) A helpful fellow artist is indispensable. If your goal is to not break anything while swinging eight feet of drywall in a small dining room my buddy Kyle can help.
All told, the experience became what some people call an “esteemable act,” a voluntary action that has the effect of raising one's sense of self worth. I was brave, I showed my work and I welcomed the whole city of Tucson, Arizona to come and see it.
Open House Art remodel
Here’s what it looked like to get the house ready for three days of art but little family life.
I boarded up our open air porch to make an outdoor gallery. Two pieces of drywall, a dozen 2 x 4’s and a half a gallon of paint and done. Beautiful and very temporary. Perfect for displaying four 36-inch square assemblages. The work was originally featured in the Tempe Center for the Arts Artology exhibition in Tempe Arizona from June 7th through September 23rd, 2025.
POrch gallery
Inside the house, I closed off the pass-through separating the dining room from the living room with more drywall. I marked a door to the den “private” and shoved a table against the kitchen entry. Voila, a dining room gallery. (In the mornings I could hear my wife calling for more coffee from the other side of the new partition. I confess my hearing can be conveniently not great.)
In the new dining room gallery I displayed a series of seven acrylic on paper paintings, Quilting Against the Economy and a smaller group of four paintings from a different series, Quilting for Dental Professionals (“It’s dark out there. I make fun.”)
quilting against the economy
Quilting for Dental Professionals
Every year the Arts Foundation for Tucson and Southern Arizona hosts Tucson’s Open Studio Tour, a citywide event that includes hundreds of artists. I’ve participated four times myself including an entirely online tour during the pandemic. The turnout is typically varied. Living as I do on the city’s fringe doesn't make for a bustling crowd of art lovers. Javelina, bobcats and Harris hawks are far more common here than gallerists.
In the past I’ve relied on the Arts Foundation to see the cognoscenti to my door. The results have been mixed. This year I chose to supplement the Arts Foundation’s efforts with my own shoe leather promotion. Neighbors I’d only nodded to in passing opened their doors and invited me to chat. Friends I happened to run into happily took my flyer.
Participation in OST 2025 was a lot of work. And getting involved at all for yet another round was all the fault of author Amie McNee.
McNee is the author of We Need Your Art, Stop Fucking Aroound and Make Someting. That’s a compelling argument, especially with the cursing. Taking my cue from McNee, I did make some work. In fact, I made tons of work. I painted and pasted sheet after sheet of acrylic mixed media on paper. They were eight by eight inches, 18 x 18 inches, 24 x 24 inches, and stored all in expensive black archival boxes in my closet.
McNee also gave a TED talk where she said, “Your art is the antidote to so many people’s pain, yet you keep it to yourself.” How does she know this stuff, know me so well? I’m looking at my closet with its stack of ten clamshell boxes bursting with my artwork and I think, “Busted.”
So on September 16th I signed up for the 2025 Open Studio Tour and whatever might come. How’s that for impact Amie? (Her fellow scold, author Austin Kleon, is even more succinct in his position. He commands artists to, Show Your Work.
Beyond the benefit of doing the right thing with my art by getting it out of the closet, there wasn’t much to boast about for my open studio efforts. Definitely not sales. As much as I’m in love with my own work, it’s not for everyone. And while some artists are fond of asking their fellows, “Do you sell,” sales is not a true measure of success.
Witness Van Gogh, Vermeer and Monet, to name just a few notoriously impoverished titans of painting. Imagine asking the Willem Dafoe or Kirk Douglas versions of Van Gogh if they sell much.
For Open Studio Tour 2025 my success was the love and appreciation I experienced from so many friends, neighbors and acquaintances. People came dressed in their Sunday best.. They were anxious to see me as much as my art. Two brought gifts, a couple made dates for coffee and one mended fences.
Home Gallery Connections Everywhere
According to the Arts Foundation for Tucson and Southern Arizona, Open Studio Tours “...offers (the public) a unique opportunity to engage with and support the vibrant artist community in Southern Arizona.” For my part, the opportunity to engage with and experience my own work in a (pretend) gallery setting was the surprise benefit participation offered.
As I reflected on the three different series of work I’d hung. I noticed my reaction to each and came to terms with my preferences and desires. I resolved to refocus my direction, to devote myself to a single series to the exclusion of the others.
I arrived at this fork in the road thanks, in part, to my unceasing devotion to doomscrolling. Sitting in my easy chair for hours on end I landed on a post by the Argentinian artist/illustrator Ramiro Clemente. In his post we witness him drawing a whimsical figure with ink, oil pastel, transfers and his fingers.
Clemente asks viewers, “...what would you create if you were unbound by other people’s opinions...I try to find that place where only me and my depression exist. What would you create if you were unbound by any constraints?”
Once upon a time (about two years ago) I transitioned from darkness to sweet, very comfortable nine-square quilt patterns of abstract compositions. Some got accepted to a very nice show in Tempe. It was a great opportunity, I learned a lot. But I learned more watching my OST2025 visitors react to the four Quilting for Dental Professionals pieces I tucked into a corner of my dining room gallery.
A good friend paused as he considered how to comment on my work in my guest book. The friend said he had a strong emotional experience to my Quilting For Dental Professionals series.“ How would you define “provocative?” he asked. I answered, “inclined to evoke a strong emotional response.”
“Provocative,” he wrote in my register. Quilting For Dental Professionals brings humor, dis-ease and darkness to viewers. It’s where I live, it's what floats my garbage scow. I can do happy, harmonious, lovely, sweet. But that will never rev my engines like a disturbing slide deck of bad teeth and unbridled consumerism offset by a level measure of home repair DIY how-to. Nine squares built to bother viewers with uncomfortable truths.
Clemente’s lesson is relevant for anyone in that liminal state of dissatisfaction lightly anesthetized by the familiar and the routine. Where else in my life have I settled for saccharine rather than embracing what might come should I act “unbound?”
I also learned a lesson from one of the most prolific art thieves of the modern era. Stephane Breitwieser, is said to have stolen 239 works in just a six year period. In The Art Thief, A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession, Breitwieser maintains his only motivation is a visceral and rousing emotional response accompanied by heart palpitations when spying a quarry in a museum. I know the feeling and it definitely applies to a certain body of work.
I’m an old man. I’d love to find a following for my dark and bent work. While I’m searching I’ll make more of what I most love and enjoy. Amie McNee and Stephane Breitwieser would surely approve. I may not ever get to show my complete Quilting for Dental Professionals series but I’m going to have a great time making so many more of them.