Barbara Lawlor, Gilpin County.  Being an artist on an open studio tour means cleaning the house, finding a place to display your work, creating a snack to inspire the taste sense as well as the visual, putting out signs, locking up dogs that like to jump on people and brushing your teeth so you have a brilliant smile as you invite art lovers into your home.

Last Thursday, the Gilpin County Library hosted a reception for the artists who will be on this year’s Gilpin Art Studio Tour. It was a potluck finger food, punch celebration an a time for the artists to meet one another as well as offer examples of their art and information on their techniques.

Just a harbinger of what is to come on the tour, which is this weekend, Saturday and Sunday, September 19 and September 20. from 11 a.m to 5 p.m. It is a free, self-guided tour of Gilpin County artists’ studios, a chance for good deals on exquisite, one-of-a-kind paintings, sculptures, fabric, photographs, candles, glassware and pottery.

It is a chance to see art that hasn’t been shown before and talk to the artists who aren’t always available.

It is a chance for the artists to sell current work and begin on their holiday inventory.

The reception was a lively, chatty event with the music of the Gael calling in the creative muses.

There are nineteen stops on the tour this year beginning with Violet Aandre on Hwy 72. Violet continues her balancing act with found items and her Chapel Totel is a charming tower of plates, jars, vases and a tiny steepled church at the top.

Lee Barstow’s photographs of the Pawnee Buttes is exhilarating in its depth of scope and lighting and is great introduction to his landscape photos. He says he participated as one of the tourists last year and liked it so much, he signed up to be part of the tour.

Mary Bell says she has been working with glass for 25 years and now has her own gallery in Central City. Her intricate, almost filigreed glass bowl is stunning in its delicate aqua color and fragile melded snow-flake like construction.

Wood sculptor Walter Perryman used the move character Conan: the Barbarian as his model and created Conan: the Cative Barbarian, a finely carved, provocative piece of work. He says he has been carving since he got his first pocket knife. He has sold most of his work in Oregon and retired, but is back into it. Cowboys, mountain lions and Indians and their horses are his heroes and he has captured the action gracefully in his work.

Lee’s wife Donna Miller’s paintings are also on display. She expresses her creativity in fantasy art.

Wool hangings by Mimi Ritter catch one’s eye as they enter the room. She says she began the craft when she was 19 years old and watched a primitive craft show on tv. She ran to her closet, found an old wool suit and ripped it up, making her first rug. She now is into felting and weaving pictures with bits and pieces of yarn.

Julie Ikler’s mosaics are always brilliant in their design and color and it seems that the more she creates her broken ceramics/china pieces, the more they are in demand. She will have many new examples of her work in the tour.

Guides are available at the Gilpin County Library. More information is available at GilpinArtStudioTour.org.