East Austin Studio Tour: Bigger and Better Than Ever

In addition to great weather, Thanksgiving, and Fun Fun Fun Fest, November in Austin has also come to mean that it’s time for the East Austin Studio Tour. A groundswell of East Austin’s creative culture, this annual event has typically been held over one weekend, right before Turkey Day. But, this year EAST will take place over a span of nine days (November 14th through November 22nd) and include two weekends!


As in the past, the tour provides the opportunity to visit artists studios in East Austin. This year the participating studios will be open from 10am until 5pm on Saturday the14th and Sunday the 15th and again on Saturday, November 21st and Sunday the 22nd. This year, for the first time, the tour also features 20 exhibition spaces, 49 “Happenings,” and 30 programs taking place throughout the nine days.

The tour will kick off with a preview party presented by the Art Alliance Austin on Thursday, November 12th from 7-10pm. Attendees will be chauffeured to six of the many participating studio spaces where they will enjoy catered drinks and food and get a sneak-peek at all of the amazing art. (Tickets are $45 and available online.)

Now in its eighth year, EAST includes over 200 individual artists (at 154 studios and galleries) working in a variety of mediums with an amazing array of materials. During the Tour, you can see a bevy of new and current work by painters, sculptors, ceramicists, photographers, jewelry makers, stone carvers, and metal and mixed media artists, among many others.

We have always worked hard to be as inclusive as possible...
...instead of limiting the number of participants we lengthened the tour and actually opened the event up to even more artists.
According to Shea Little, artist with Big Medium and co-founder and co-organizer of the East Austin Studio Tour (along with artists Jana Swec and Joseph Phillips), they changed the event to cover two weekends “…Mainly because of the number of participants involved. EAST has been steadily increasing in size since we began the tour in 2003, so we assumed it would continue this growth and with the size of the tour last year, we had to make some kind of change. We have always worked hard to be as inclusive as possible, so instead of limiting the number of participants we lengthened the tour and actually opened the event up to even more artists. We hope that this new format will allow more artists not located in East Austin the opportunity to get involved.” Sounds great to us! That just means MORE time to ride your bike around the East side, chat with artists one-on-one in their studios, and buy original works of art at affordable prices.


As part of our coverage of East Austin Studio Tour, we'll be publishing artist interviews and information about EAST events all week long. Be sure to check out the EAST Web site for a list of participating artists and studios, detailed schedules, printable maps, additional photographs of artwork, and an interactive Google map for digital navigation. As always, EAST is free and open to the public!

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Austinist is a news and culture website about Austin, Texas. We publish Monday through Friday, and also maintain a guide to local arts and entertainment events that we call the Weekly IST List.

Editor: Allen Y Chen
Publisher: Gothamist

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