Quick Take
The big three-weekend Open Studios Art Tour begins this weekend with more than 300 artists across Santa Cruz County. For the past 20 years, the event has been run by Ann Ostermann, who has announced that 2024's event will be her last.
The colors of autumn, we all know them: pumpkin orange, toasty brown, harvest gold.
In Santa Cruz County, however, at least in the first half of October, all those rich tones take a back seat to one big, bright, bold interloper: chartreuse green.
The color of a radioactive lime is also the official color of the Open Studios Art Tour, the three-weekend arts extravaganza presented by Arts Council Santa Cruz County, featuring more than 300 artists and their studios in every corner of the county.
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By absolutely no coincidence at all, chartreuse is also the central theme of the personal style of the Arts Council’s Ann Ostermann, who has been overseeing Open Studios for 20 years. The 2024 event marks the final go-round for the “Queen of Green,” who is retiring this year at the age of 68.
The “Chanteuse of Chartreuse” has been rocking the green long before it became the pop-culture color of the year. But, even if you’ve never met the “MacArthur Fellow of Green/Yellow” (OK, I’ll stop now), you’ve certainly noticed the eye-popping color of the signs covering the county come October.
Open Studios kicks off this weekend, Saturday and Sunday, with the artists who live/work on the north end of Santa Cruz County — defined as anything north of the Santa Cruz Harbor. The weekend of Oct. 12 and 13 belongs to the artists south of the yacht harbor. That’s followed by an “encore” weekend, Oct. 19 and 20, featuring a selection of artists from all over the county.
From 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on those weekend days, art lovers are invited to drop in at artists’ studios, visit with the artists, see them in action, and browse through their works, (Reminder: the holiday gift-giving season is approaching quickly.)
It is, of course, not humanly possible to be anywhere near comprehensive in visiting local artists. And that means, you must have a plan. To map out just exactly where you’re going and when, you need the official 116-page Open Studios catalog, currently available in print form on roughly three-quarters of the flat surfaces throughout Santa Cruz County, or through the tour’s website.
The event is also free, which is part of Ostermann’s 20-year legacy at Open Studios. When she first came on in 2004, “I inherited a beautifully organized event,” she said. But, to participate, locals had to lay out $20 for a calendar with the addresses of the various artist studios. The big challenges that Ostermann faced were not so much organizational or logistical. They were technological.
To apply for the juried tour, artists had to submit a four-page (paper) application and were required to show their work in person through a slide-show presentation — we’re talking actual film transparencies on a slide carousel. It was up to Ostermann to shepherd the whole process online for the benefit of everyone, which presented a challenging learning curve for some of the older artists. The calendar model lost its momentum, and the event was made free. The jury process was revamped to make the whole process more fair, and outreach to younger and more diverse artists was ramped up.
“Over the years, we’ve just tried to react to what’s happening in the world and how we can keep up,” said Ostermann.
Throughout her tenure, Ostermann said she has tried to be mindful of balance in the Open Studios roster between familiar, long-term returnees and first-timers. Each year, the number of artists who apply fluctuates, and it’s Ostermann’s goal to keep her roster of roughly 300 studios diverse in age and experience of its artists, and in its artistic mediums. Naturally, painting dominates the tour, but it also includes jewelry, furniture, sculpture, glasswork, textiles, pottery, woodwork, photography and clothing.
Bree Karpavage, who currently runs the monthly First Friday art tour, will take over Open Studios in 2025.
As for Ostermann, the tour’s use of chartreuse green won’t be her only legacy. She brought the event into the digital age, opened it up both to more artists and more visitors, and established a self-sustaining model to bring in new and younger artists. She also worked hard to guide more than 300 artists through the often expensive and exhausting process of setting up for Open Studios.
“You need to be a mama bear,” she said on what it takes to be successful maintaining the tour. “But you also need to be a mama bird and kick them out of the nest sometimes.”
At 68, Ostermann is ready to embark on the next chapter of her life: “The most exciting thing for me is that I’m not going to be working 40 hours a week, like I’ve done for the last 22 years. I love to read. I love to garden. But I picture myself one morning just waking up and thinking, ‘Gosh, that book is really calling out to me.’ That feels luxurious to me.”
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