Barbara Lawlor, Boulder County. If you didn't get a chance to participate in the Magnolia artists' part of the Boulder County Open Studio tour last weekend, not to worry; this once-a-year opportunity will continue on Saturday and Sunday.

Local artists are eager to have you visit their studios, see what they have accomplished and chat with the artists in their own working space. Most of the artists have some cookies and juice to enjoy while you breathe in the scents and immerse yourself in the studio ambiance.

This year's tour includes Vivian Long, Steve Homsher, David Bahr, and Brent Warren.

It is Warren's first time to join the tour. His studio, virtually all of his property, and his home, are his canvas, his exhibition wall. His work is fun, strange, incredibly rendered. It is not easy to look at Warren's work for just a moment; there are depths and surprises and twists revealing more than originally meets the eye.

There is the portable camping light made of old computer parts. If you look hard enough you can find the one switch that turns on a light bulb. There is a metal sculpture that has a dinosaur shape but has a harmonica for teeth: the Harmonaurus; the Electroid Lemonade; a whole bunch of whimsical names and one-of-kind critters.

If you ask, Warren just might show you a magic trick or two. He is known locally as Doc Murdock, Magician. Much of his collection goes way back to the 60s, but he also has created prolifically in the last few years. It is well worth the trip along the golden-bordered Magnolia art trail.

David Bahr's photography is technically amazing. A couple of years ago he noticed the subtle but compelling colors of fall grasses and began shooting them in different lights, blowing up the images and capturing billowy organic light movement that has won awards and is hanging in many art galleries.

Vivian Long's home, nestled into a gulch on Range Road, features a range of diversity of media that adds to the jungle lights and shadows of her plants. She has delved into oil painting in the past couple of years and her work is breathtaking. "I still love pastels but it is more fragile; oil is easier to transport."

Long makes her own frames from exquisitely carved wood that blends in with the lines of the painting itself. Ghosts of the Canyon is a dramatic scene vivid with light and shadow, and the sense that there is something unseen that needs to be explored.

Having gone from pastel to oil, Long is now immersed in the world of digital painting and has created a series of female models with the medium.

Steve Homsher's work is hung and displayed in his gallery, a yurt that makes for perfect lighting and a unique space for viewing. Extremely prolific, he has paintings of horses and cows and landscapes that explore the light that emphasizes their shape and the feel of the air around them. He says he is always looking for the perfect painting, always refining. "There is never a time I'll say, 'I got it.'"

Homsher says he always struggling to improve, that he has little victories now and then, little shards of understanding that make it all worth it. At the moment he has a show, 58 paintings, on display at NCAR in Boulder.

All four of these artists are well worth the drive along Magnolia. The studios will be open from 12 a.m. to 6 p.m. For more information and maps, visit www.OpenStudios.org.