Apply to be a Winding Roads Artist
Greetings, Artists!
The Winding Roads Art Tour committee is in full swing with planning for this coming year's tour: our 10th anniversary! We have been building on the momentum from previous years and are looking forward to the possibilities ahead of us. As we gear up for the 2026 tour, our core values of high-quality artistry, diversity of art, and accessibility for both artist and tour attendees remain strong!
The Winding Roads Art Tour takes place every year on the Second Weekend of June. This coming year’s event will take place June 13th and 14th, 2026, with tour hours from 10-4.
There is an exciting shift that the planning committee would like you to be aware of as you plan for this next tour: Tiered participation! While studio tours are the bedrock of this tour, we acknowledge that not every artist that would like to participate has a studio that can be opened to the public, or a body of work large enough to display as its own tour stop. In order to be more inclusive, we are offering additional tiers of participation.
For emerging artists, those without their own studio, or with limited work to show, we are offering the Gallery Artist tier. This tier would feature the artist’s work at a community venue for the duration of the tour weekend. Such an artist might have a maximum of 6 pieces of work to show and would be present at the gallery space with other participating artists throughout the weekend. The artist fee for this tier is $50.
The tried-and-true bread and butter of the tour is the Studio Host or Studio Guest Artist. This tier is appropriate for an artist with their own studio OR has a larger body of work to show as a studio guest. The artist fee for this tier is $175. We encourage any previous participants to consider participating again as a tour artist!
We are also excited to debut the opportunity for a tour artist (host or guest) to be featured as Workshop Artist! A Workshop Artist will organize a paid workshop experience for tour-goers to participate in your art form. Held outside the tour hours, the Workshop artist has the opportunity to add further financial value to their tour participation. Since this year is our rollout of this new tier of participation, the Winding Roads Planning Committee is pleased to offer promotion of artist workshops above and beyond at no additional cost (next year there may be an added fee for this type of participation). We welcome your thoughts and collaboration as we experiment with this style of artist organization and tour attendee participation.
The committee also thanks you in advance for considering which artists you know that have not yet participated in the Winding Roads Tour and might be a good fit! These artists might be from this area, or further afield in the Midwest. Please forward this invitation and application to those artists so that they might apply if interested.
A filled out application form is due to the committee by December 15th, 2025. Upon receiving a letter of acceptance from the committee, kindly pay your artist fee and submit the required high resolution photos by January 9th, 2026.
Hats off to another great year!
The Winding Road Planning Committee