From the free-for-all at Juvenal Reis Studios

We spent most of our time at the LIC Arts Open wandering around the open studios at Juvenal Reis Studios, 43-01 22nd St., Long Island City. The studios are open to the public again tomorrow from noon to 6 p.m., and I highly recommend taking some time to get lost in the mazes of the second, third, and fourth floors of the spacious building. LIC Art Center is also throwing its doors open tomorrow; I feel like going back and doing a bit of poking around there, too.

There were more than a hundred artists opening up their doors at Reis Studios (including Jaclyn Santos from Bravo's Work of Art -- reality TV meets reality!); the following are works from a few of our favorites.

Leah Reid, oil on canvas

Tet 7, Andrea Bergart, oil on canvas (Bergart also makes excellent necklaces with mosaics of Perler beads based on many of her paintings)

From Untitled or Relevant, Lilly Handley

  

Left: Page 86, Eric Rhein, wire and paper; right: a portion of an untitled work of ink on paper by Rena Teratani

Finally, although we only went to explore, we ended up taking home a painting: Locust Grove, 1998, by Paul Fortunato. Fortunato needs to expand and is moving studios; there are a number of great $50 canvases in his current space, which I think is on the fourth floor of Reis. Snap them up! Or just enjoy some of his large-scale pieces, like this cat smoking a cigarette.