Build Your Great Falls Studio Tour Around a 1 p.m. Raku Firing

The 23rd annual Great Falls Studios Studio Tour runs Saturday, October 17, and Sunday, October 18, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. each day. The organizers call it a choose-your-own-adventure. You pick the studios, and road signs lead you to each one. The official roster lists 31 artists and the Arts of Great Falls school, so there are more stops than one weekend can comfortably hold.

The map treats every stop the same, but the artist pages don't. Most studios run their activities all day. A few run them only during a set window, and the most dramatic one, an outdoor raku firing at Pig Pen Pottery, happens only on Saturday from 1 to 3 p.m. Plan Saturday around those fixed windows and fit the all-day studios into the gaps.

Start Where the Farmers Market Already Is

The Artists' Atelier, the tour's largest group studio, is listed in the 2026 tour brochure at 756 Walker Road. That is also the address of the Great Falls Farmers Market, which lists its outdoor market as open every Saturday, year-round, from 10 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. On the Saturday of the tour, the market's hours fall inside the tour's, so a morning on Walker Road gives you both at once.

The Atelier puts several painters and a photographer under one roof, so you can see a lot before you start driving:

• Jill Banks paints in oils and invites visitors to watch her work and ask questions both days.
• Theresa Miller works in watercolor and oil and plans to paint on and off throughout both days.
• Roberta Pruett Beasley works in acrylic and collage, with mixed-media demonstrations running both days.
• Jeremy Hansen shows fine-art photography and is available for photography conversations both days.
• Joyce Lee paints oversized flowers in oil.

The Arts of Great Falls school is part of the same stop. It has a special exhibit at the Atelier and information on its fine-art classes.

Two more stops are a short hop up Walker Road. Village Green Day School at 790 Walker Road hosts Dee Leggett's jewelry and photography. Artists on the Green at 776B Walker Road hosts painter Layla Gray, who has a painting demonstration planned for both days. Leggett's sessions run on a set schedule, at 3 p.m. both days: jewelry-making techniques on Saturday and nature-photography ideas on Sunday. If you want to catch one, you'll need to be back on Walker Road at 3, which makes the cluster a good place to both start and finish the day.

The Hours That Don't Move

Here are the scheduled windows listed on the 2026 artist pages. Everything else on the tour runs all day or has no activity listed.

The table shows a pattern. On Saturday, the scheduled events are spread from late morning to mid-afternoon, and the only kiln firing takes the 1 p.m. slot. On Sunday, the same two potters switch from demonstrating to handing visitors the clay. Saturday is the day for watching, and Sunday is the day for getting your hands dirty.

Why Pig Pen Pottery Anchors Saturday

Laura Nichols has run Pig Pen Pottery since 1988 in the basement of Orchard House, her grandparents' home built in 1939, on her family's Hidden Springs Farm. She describes the studio as a set of separate work zones: one for throwing, one for hand-building and a glaze room. There are four kilns. Two electric kilns handle bisque firing. Two gas kilns sit outside, one for reduction-firing stoneware and one for raku.

On Saturday afternoon, that outdoor raku kiln runs glaze, saggar, horsehair and obvara firings. Her artist page has a line about raku worth reading before you go: "What the fire gives you is what you get!" Her everyday stoneware is hand-painted with roosters, foxes, herons, pileated woodpeckers, owls and guinea fowl, and made to go in the dishwasher, microwave and oven.

Getting there takes some care. Her page puts it plainly:

The driveway is long and narrow. Please pull off into driveways along the way to let others pass. Beware the ditches are deep!

At the busiest hour of the tour's busiest day, you're better off arriving near 1 p.m. than trying to squeeze in at 2:45.

Filling the Gaps With All-Day Studios

The all-day studios are the flexible part of the plan. Sorted by how you take part, they fill the time between fixed windows.

Work with your hands

• Robin Smith at Hidden Forest Studio and Eloisa Raynault at Little Fox Pots both offer wheel-throwing all day, both days.
• Sheri Rhodes at Sweet FA Studio lets visitors make cyanotype prints, and has examples of gum-dichromate printing to look over.
• Will Tuthill at Toad Stone Studio demonstrates lithography and Japanese woodblock and has hands-on printing, letterpress and stamping.
• Sandy Buffie has alcohol-ink painting on tiles all day. Elizabeth Bertholon, who shares part of her studio, runs an emotions game, coloring and magnet-making at Rapt Art Studio.
• At Nancy Ross's jewelry studio, visitors can add to a community necklace. Photographer Meghanne Sennott is also there, making sun prints from natural objects, weather permitting.

Add to a shared piece

• Tom Tucker works out of a garage that doubles as his studio and invites visitors of all ages to add to a community painting for charity.
• Pat Neuman sets up a family-friendly activity at her terrace table.

Watch an artist work

• At the renovated Gray Barn Studio, Parinaz Bahadori and Jennifer Duncan stage a "dueling artists" still-life painting and run a postcard collage all day.
• Tom Stack paints in a studio with a greenhouse, and Michael Long has a small wood-carving area set up in his home workshop.
• Linda Jones at Towlston Woods Studio paints traditional watercolor on Saturday and mixed media on Sunday.

The organizers describe the studios as remodeled barns, historic farms, converted garages, contemporary and traditional homes, and group studios. The list above covers nearly all of those types. The artist page and interactive map show where each studio is. Some stops are marked wheelchair accessible.

Before the First Studio and After the Last

Saturday has a second event. St. Francis Episcopal Church at 9220 Georgetown Pike is holding a free Family Fall Festival starting at 9 a.m. It has music, games, inflatables and vendors, plus book, bake and plant sales. The festival starts an hour before the studios open, so families can stop there first and still reach Walker Road by mid-morning.

For an early bite, FFXnow reported that Toastique planned its grand opening at 9891 Georgetown Pike for January 24, 2026, with a menu of toast, smoothies, bowls, juices and coffee.

For dinner, the tour weekend lines up with a new restaurant. FFXnow reported that Great Falls Lodge Bar and Grill planned a soft launch on September 7 at 9835 Georgetown Pike in Great Falls Center, opening first for dinner from 3 to 10 p.m. Owner and chef Neel Kamal plans to add lunch and happy hours later. It is the first Virginia location for a concept that began with the Urbana Lodge and Clarks Lodge in Maryland. The soft-opening menu covered burgers, flatbreads, crab cakes, baby back ribs and jambalaya. The space was previously El Tio Tex-Mex Grill. The restaurant's own site still calls its menu a soft-launch menu and says it expects to offer a fuller dining experience in October. Check what's being served before you book a table for after the tour.

The 2026 tour map also lists several local businesses as sponsor locations, including Blue Chicken Bakery, The Old Brogue, Mookie's BBQ and L'Auberge Chez Francois. Great Falls Studios was founded in 2003 to promote local artists through exhibitions and community events.

Rachel works with clients who care how a space is made, from a 1939 farmhouse basement full of kilns to a barn turned into a studio. If the tour gets you thinking about light, materials or room to create in your own home, Rachel Van Zanten would be glad to talk it through. Let's Connect.