Since 2012, a loosely organized, ever-morphing group of Gardiner-based artists has been hosting an annual weekend of studio open houses known as GOST, short for Gardiner Open Studio Tour. This festive peek into the creative processes of local artmakers returns May 3 and 4 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and you’re invited. The website at gardineropenstudiotour.com/about has all the specifics, including a downloadable map showing all the participating studio sites.
“Lots of interesting people this year on the GOST tour,” reports Mexican folk arts-inspired sculptor/ceramist Annie O’Neill, who came aboard during the event’s second year and has never left. “Arianne Wack is a painter who also works on Radiolab. A group made a video of me for Tubi (tinyurl.com/4puyds29 – I am the sixth segment) and it’s on certain international flights. And there are so many thriving and oldster artists on the tour this year.”
While it’s true that many of the participating artists have other gigs going on, or bases in other places besides sleepy rural Gardiner, sometimes the tour itself is the way they get “discovered” by the wider world. Marsha Massih shares studio space on Route 44/55 with her husband John Varriano, a fellow painter; both were among the nine co-founders of GOST, so they’ve had the opportunity to watch the annual event grow in reach and reputation. “The first year, not a lot of people came through because they didn’t know about it. But by now it has become a very social event. People come back to catch up,” Massih says. “We really have carved out relationships with people.”
Many of the tour attendees are locals, with new folks discovering their artist neighbors each year – including people who never previously imagined themselves as potential art collectors. But unsurprisingly, many are vacationers and weekenders looking for something to do on a day when the weather’s not nice enough for a hike in the Gunks. It was one of those “city folks” making an unplanned visit to Massih’s studio who recently brought her a delightful taste of fame: having one of her paintings pop up onscreen in a scene from the Hulu TV series Only Murders in the Building.
“A couple of years ago, a young assistant art director from the show came in. She didn’t identify herself, but she did sign the book,” Massih recounts. “Four months later she contacted me. It wasn’t like a targeted thing – just a serendipity thing. She said they were getting ready for Season 3. She came back and looked at stuff and was taking photos right and left.”
Hulu was interested in several of her paintings, but that was no guarantee that they’d end up being used for set decoration, or that any scenes showing them wouldn’t end up on the cutting-room floor. Fortunately for Massih, the head art director took a particular liking to a small oil titled Bartender’s Choice and decided not only to hang it over an entranceway, but actually to put a light directly over it. So, in Episode 5, as Meryl Streep’s character lets Martin Short’s character into her apartment, Massih’s painting is prominently displayed right behind the two legendary actors. Short looks around and utters the line, “Art, art everywhere.”
The episode aired in 2023, but the artist, an avid admirer of Streep (“truly the greatest actor of the last century”), is still feeling a bit starstruck about her moment of national exposure. “I was so gratified – and it’s all thanks to the tour. You just never know who’s going to walk through those doors.”
For the average visitor, of course, it’s “a great opportunity to meet the artists,” Massih says. “What we’re doing is trying to demystify the whole process of artmaking. When you visit the studios, you can really see what’s going on. We find that people won’t be as shy about asking questions as they might be in a gallery, which can be an intimidating place.” She notes that the price points for acquiring one’s very own artwork can also be lower than the average “newbie” imagines. “It too can be yours, for maybe the price of six big dinners you’ve already digested. It’s a big decision, but you’ll have it for the rest of your life. And unlike in a gallery, all the money goes directly to the artists.”
The 22 artists participating in the 2025 Gardiner Artists Studio Tour are ceramists Annie O’Neill, Michelle Rhodes, Tiffany Dyckman, Lynn Isaacson and Amy Schnitzer; fiber artist Alexa Ginsburg; mixed-media artists Cynthia Winika, Leonie Lacouette, Meadow and Laura Phillips; painters Marsha Massih, John Varriano, Susan Kraft, DM, Stacie Flint, Marilyn Perry, Bruce Pileggi, Mary Ann Strandell, Laurie Sammons, Michael X Rose and Arianne Weck; and sculptor Michael Rees. “The variety is wonderful,” Massih observes.
You can view examples of their artwork on the website at www.gardineropenstudiotour.com, along with biographical information and, in many cases, links to the artists’ individual websites. Finding out what appeals to you most should be helpful in planning your art crawl, but the tour is compact enough to hit a lot of studios in a single day. Some of the 16 sites are shared by multiple artists. “Some studio tours, like Saugerties, are very sprawling. We like to keep it kind of tight,” says Massih. The studio sites range from Albany Post Road – just outside of New Paltz – in the northeast to Awosting Road, just over the border in Pine Bush, in the southwest. Check ’em out!
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