Each summer, Upstate Art Weekend turns the Hudson Valley and Catskills into a sprawling circuit of exhibitions, performances, installations, and open-air encounters. (This year’s event is June 25-29.) But before the marquee weekend arrives, the organization is carving out space for something more intimate: the studio itself.
Open Studios by Upstate Art Weekend launches May 16 and 17, inviting the public into the working spaces of 240 artists spread across the region. Running from 11am to 6pm each day, the event stretches from the Hudson River towns to the Catskills hillsides, transforming garages, barns, storefronts, and converted industrial buildings into temporary portals into artists’ daily practices.
Rather than the polished neutrality of a gallery, the studio offers something messier and more revealing: half-finished canvases leaning against walls, clay dust on the floor, sketches pinned beside completed works, and the accumulated evidence of experimentation. Visitors get the rare chance to see not just what artists make, but how they live with the work while it’s becoming itself.
This year’s Open Studios features painters, sculptors, ceramicists, photographers, textile artists, printmakers, and multidisciplinary creators across the Hudson Valley’s increasingly interconnected arts ecosystem. Some participants are established names with international exhibition histories, like Kathy Ruttenberg and Andrew Moore; others are emerging artists building practices far from the commercial gravity of New York City. Taken together, the event functions less like a formal art fair and more like a decentralized map of the region’s creative life.
“We launched Open Studios as a standalone event to celebrate the incredible artists and makers who call this region home,” says Upstate Art Weekend founder Helen Toomer. “Being welcomed into an artist’s studio is such a special and generous experience, offering a rare glimpse into creative processes, spaces, and daily practice.”
The weekend also reflects how dramatically the Hudson Valley’s arts landscape has expanded over the last decade. What was once a loose constellation of individual studios and small arts organizations has evolved into a dense cultural corridor attracting artists, curators, collectors, and institutions from far beyond the region. Open Studios taps into that momentum while keeping the emphasis local and personal.
“We wanted to create a moment for artists to fully shine while giving visitors the chance to connect more deeply with the region’s vibrant creative community,” Toomer says. “It also allows participating artists to explore the many organizations and exhibitions during Upstate Art Weekend in June, while curators, collectors, and arts professionals can spend meaningful time discovering artists’ studios during Open Studios by UAW.”
The weekend officially kicks off Friday, May 15, with “Earthen Plot,” a group exhibition curated by Toomer at UAW headquarters in Kingston from 6 to 8pm. From there, the region opens outward: studio doors unlocked, coffee brewing, works in progress waiting on tables and walls.
For visitors, Open Studios offers a different way of moving through the Hudson Valley—not by winery trail or antiques map, but through the places where artists actually make things.
