Open Studio Tour

Open Studio signs mark the stops. Behind each one may be a single artist or several working together, in a house, a gallery, or a working studio. Tubac Center of the Arts counts over 100 artists taking part. Visitors drive themselves from stop to stop between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m., carrying the Open Studio Guide, a free catalog that maps the tour. Admission costs nothing. Most of the work is for sale, and while most artists take credit cards, the center advises bringing some cash.

The tour now runs over two three-day weekends. In 2026 the studios of Tubac and Rio Rico opened February 27 through March 1, and those of Green Valley and Quail Creek opened March 6 through 8. The Green Valley News counted 43 artists in Tubac and Rio Rico that year, 39 in Green Valley and 23 in Quail Creek. The Tubac Chamber of Commerce lists the next tour for March 5–7, 2027. Its listing names the kinds of artists a visitor meets: painters, sculptors, jewelers, potters and illustrators, some of them giving demonstrations.

One Rio Rico stop belongs to Nath, who works under the name Sculpting with Cactus. By her own account she has opened her studio for the tour for the past five years. She gathers only dead cactus from legally accessible desert and combines fibers harvested mostly from prickly pear with fossil mesquite, cholla, saguaro and saguaro boots. She mounts each finished piece on petrified wood from the Holbrook area.

The guide, the preview, and the stamps

The tour starts at the center, 9 Plaza Road in Tubac, about 40 miles south of Tucson and 17 miles north of Nogales, off Interstate 19. For the 2026 tour, an opening reception on February 13 launched the Open Studio Artist Exhibition, a preview of participating artists’ work on view February 14 through March 29. Guides could be picked up at the center or at any artist location. They were also available at the Tubac Chamber of Commerce, the Tubac galleries, the Tubac Post Office, the reception area of Tubac Golf Resort, the Green Valley Chamber of Commerce and the Nogales County Building.

On the opening Friday the guide also collects stamps. The 2026 Tubac Gallery Walking Tour ran from 1 to 5:30 p.m. in Tubac Village, and visitors had their guides stamped gallery by gallery. Four or more stamps entered the holder in a raffle at the center, drawn at 5:30, and the winner had to be present. The stops included:

• the Bruce Baughman Gallery and Studio on Tubac Road;
• Cactus Wren Gallery, which houses the Nest, the working studios of Sonsoles Shack, Patty Sjolin, Rex Bybee, Mayling Dalke, Caroline Butson and Gale Thomssen;
• Clay Hands on Camino Otero, which represents more than 40 ceramic artists from New Mexico, Arizona and California;
• the Clay Rabbit House, a working pottery and gallery on the East Frontage Road;
• David Simons’s oil-painting studio inside El Presidito on Calle Iglesia;
• Gallery 139, run by the painters Barbara Kuzara and Karol Honeycutt, which shows the ceramics of Curtis Hoard.

An artist colony and its association

The center dates from the early 1970s. A photograph provided by the Tubac Historical Society shows the building just finished in August 1972. The center describes Tubac as an 1800s Spanish presidio turned artist colony. The painter Dale Nichols opened an art school there in 1948 and restored some of the historic buildings, and other artists followed, among them Mortimer Wilson, Sophie and Harwood Steiger, Hal Empie and Hugh Cabot. The Santa Cruz Valley Art Association was formed to give artists a place to show their work. It remains the nonprofit’s legal name, and it does business as Tubac Center of the Arts. After three additions, the building holds five galleries with more than 3,500 square feet of wheelchair-accessible exhibit space, a performance stage, an art library and a gift shop.

The sixth tour, 2015

The Arizona Republic described the March 20–22, 2015 edition as the sixth annual Open Studios Tour. Studios and galleries of 48 artists in Arivaca, Green Valley, Tubac and Rio Rico took part. “The artists’ open studio is a chance to see a behind-the-scenes view of how and where artists work,” said Karon Leigh, then the center’s exhibits manager. “You have direct contact with the artist and gain an understanding of their lives and their art process.”

The artists featured that year included:

• David and Paula Perino, who made large mixed-media sculpture together in their Arivaca home studio. Their “Conference of the Birds,” then on view at the center, was inspired by the local love of birding.
• Curtis Hoard, who worked at his home studio in Green Valley. A figurative vase of his had taken Best of Show in the center’s “From the Earth” exhibit.
• Barbara Kuzara of Rio Rico, who welded sculpture from scrap metal.
• Leigh Morrison, an oil painter in Tubac who paints Santa Cruz County scenes and horses. She had been on the tour since its beginning.

The Tubac Chamber of Commerce now puts the tour’s age at over fifteen years.

A grant, a bilingual catalog, and Nogales

On December 13, 2016, the National Endowment for the Arts announced a $10,000 Challenge America grant to the association. The money supported what was then called the Santa Cruz Valley Open Studio Tour, covering studios across lower Pima County and Santa Cruz County. The grant description planned an expansion to Sahuarita and Nogales, with tours in Spanish, a bilingual catalogue, a website and workshops for a Latino audience. “The arts are for all of us,” said NEA Chair Jane Chu.

The Nogales International reported the 2017 schedule: a preview exhibition opening January 20 and studios open March 17–19, with Nogales welcomed as a participant. “Expanding the reach of the open studio tour from Green Valley/Sahuarita to Tubac to the City of Nogales gives the Southern Arizona artist community a chance to share their incredible talent with the diverse and dedicated art lovers, locally, nationally and internationally,” Michael Fenlason of the center said in a news release. Photographs with the story showed visitors gathered in the studio of Michael Arthur Jayme and the workspace of David Voisard, both part of earlier tours.

Gourds and iced tea in Quail Creek

In QuailCreekCrossing.com, Debbie O’Rourke wrote that 2020 marked the fourth year Quail Creek artists had taken part. Until then they had shown together in the community’s Creative Arts and Technology Building. For the March 13–15, 2020 tour they moved into their own homes:

• Gary and Glenis Leitch opened their studio, courtyard and house to show gourd totems and rock art canvases.
• Four artists set out watercolors, acrylics, oils, jewelry and birdhouses in O’Rourke’s back garden: Jean Pastore, Susan Branch, Stephanie Chin and O’Rourke herself. They offered iced tea and gave demonstrations through all three days. Visitors parked along the side of the house and came in by the back gate.
• Judy Ross, on the tour for the first time, opened her home studio and demonstrated acrylic pouring and watercolor technique at 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. each day.