For the Monterey County Open Studios Art Tour, local artists open their homes and their minds.

Visiting a gallery or museum means seeing works of art well after they are completed. They are framed, labeled and hung meticulously. What about peeling back the curtain and seeing the artist at work, in their workspace?

That’s the premise of the Monterey County Open Studios Art Tour, a two-weekend event that began Oct. 12, in which dozens of local artists open their doors – some to their garages or living rooms – and invite the public in.

Some participating artists don’t have a space suitable to public access, so they exhibit in collective art spaces, like Arts Council for Monterey County’s ArtWorks @Salinas space, or Hijos del Sol Arts Productions.

At ArtWorks on Oct. 13, painter Kenji Tanner is smiling in the doorway, welcoming visitors as she creates a new work in bright acrylics, with fine 3-D detail done in glass beads. At the next station over, Shagufta Khan is exhibiting in her studio space where she uses her hands and water on paint to create abstract images full of lines and movement. She comes here almost daily after work as an instructional training creator for Dole, “especially when I have a super urge to paint.”

Studio to studio, styles vary widely. Kristen Burroughs, who trained at CSU Monterey Bay’s science illustration program, presents watercolors of animals. She makes art in her Marina apartment in between her three jobs. (Like many participating artists, she is also selling affordably priced prints and stickers.)

“I like to get people excited about nature,” Burroughs says. “I also just love bats, and animals that people may not completely understand.”

Just a mile to the east, Hijos del Sol presents a similar collection of artists who are working in different styles and mediums. Rubi Hernandez is new to town. Originally from Guanajuato, Mexico, she immigrated to Fresno in 2011 then studied art at CSU Long Beach. She met her now-husband and moved to Salinas, where she is showing her work – photographs, drawings and sculpture – for the first time.

Ilse Reyes, who paints at her kitchen table in Monterey, is showing dots in vivid colors, some painted and some three-dimensional woolen balls nested in plaster pieces that resemble fabric. “I haven’t shown my work yet,” she says. Seeing it on the wall, she adds, “is pretty cool.”

OPEN STUDIOS ART TOUR 11am-5pm Saturday-Sunday, Oct. 19-20. Various locations. Free. 622-9060, arts4mc.org/open-studios.