At Betsey Regan’s studio, an art tour can turn into a salon. At Roger Ricco’s property, visitors can wander through a meadow planted for pollinators. In Gail Albert’s kitchen, about 30 photographs will offer glimpses of the natural world close to home.

All three are participating in the Woodstock Artists Association & Museum’s Members Studio Tour, which will bring visitors into artists’ workspaces across the region on Oct. 10 and 11, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. each day.

The free, self-guided tour features 41 artists working in painting, photography, sculpture, jewelry, and other media, including large-scale crochet. Maps are available at WAAM, 28 Tinker St. in Woodstock, at participating studios, and on the museum’s website.

For the first time, a pop-up exhibition in WAAM’s Solo Gallery offers a preview of participating artists’ work. Open from noon to 5 p.m. through Oct. 4, it gives artists a chance to see one another’s work and visitors a way to decide which studios to explore.

Nicole Goldberg, WAAM’s executive director for the past six years, said members began asking her to organize a tour similar to Saugerties’ long-running event soon after she arrived. Because WAAM serves artists within a 50-mile radius of Woodstock, she wasn’t sure the idea would work.

By 2024, she was ready to try. That year’s tour drew 53 participating artists and an estimated 800 to 1,000 visitors, she said.

“This year,” Goldberg said, “feels like a really different group of artists,” with many newcomers.

The largest concentration is in Woodstock, Hurley, and West Hurley, where 16 artists will open their doors. Another cluster is in the Kingston area, with others scattered across the Hudson River as far away as Poughkeepsie.

For Regan, the tour is a chance to welcome visitors into an artistic community that once welcomed her. She lost everything she owned when Hurricane Sandy struck her home on the Jersey Shore and was living in a camper when Byrdcliffe offered her a cabin, extending similar invitations to other displaced artists.

“All we did was paint all day,” Regan said.

She soon moved to Woodstock permanently. A fresco artist, she developed a type of plaster that adheres well to canvas and paper.

“I love the chalkiness of it,” she said. “I can sand it, I can gouge it.”

In West Hurley, Deirdre Laughton will show four large-scale crochet pieces. She works in a variety of media, often focusing on two or more at a time; her latest interests are crochet and clay.

Laughton and her husband, a potter and sculptor, moved to West Hurley in 2019 and found more opportunities to exhibit their work than they had expected.

“We had not realized how perfect Woodstock would be for us,” she said. “I feel supported and excited.”

Many participating artists draw inspiration from nature. Ricco and his wife developed a meadow of native plants for butterflies and other pollinators after moving to a seven-acre property once owned by the Woodstock artist John Pike. Visitors can view Ricco’s paintings and photography, then stroll through the meadow.

“Wild things, found things,” inspire him, he said.

Albert said she experiences “God’s presence and glory” in the natural world and tries to share it through her photography. She has added native plants to her garden and delights in those that arrive on their own.

“This year,” she said, “there are a lot of plants coming up that I never planted,” including goldenrod and pokeweed, “and they’re so beautiful.”

She will display about 30 photographs in her kitchen, with subjects including the bog behind her house and the Sawkill River.

“They’re all about magic, to me, and all this incredible glory,” she said.

Tania Kravath also spoke of magic. In the garage that became her studio after she moved to West Hurley 23 years ago, she will show work reflecting “different chapters of my life,” she said.

Kravath began as a painter before she was “enticed into a community of people who work with clay,” she said. For 40 years, she was absorbed by the “magic” of a firing process that turns a coating of ash into glass. She also taught herself bronze casting and now works in mixed-media painting and collage.

Living where she “sees green all the time” has shaped her work, she said.

“I feel like I’m growing some very hopeful pieces of artwork.”

For the artists, the weekend also offers something that time alone in a studio cannot: conversation with visitors.

“What I really love about it,” Regan said, is that “it turns into kind of a salon.”

She is among the artists who offer food and drink to those stopping by.

“My open studio is like a big party,” she said.

Margaret Tomlinson is a contributing writer. You can send her an email at reporting@theoverlooknews.com.