RAAC's 21st annual Fall Art Tour runs Saturday and Sunday, November 7 and 8, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. both days. It's free. It includes 27 studios, seven galleries and more than 80 artists. Those two venue counts call for two different kinds of planning. The galleries are in village centers, at addresses you can look up today. Most of the studios are on private property down county roads, and their published profiles give no street address. So the studios are the part of this tour that takes planning, and they are where the weekend is worth spending.
The galleries cluster in two villages
Six of the tour's seven galleries list locations, and all six are in or near two village centers.
Washington
- Middle Street Gallery, 311 Gay Street, lower level
- Gay Street Gallery, 337 Gay Street
- R.H. Ballard Gallery, in the historic town, one block from the Inn at Little Washington
Sperryville
- Thornton River Art, 37C Main Street
- Haley Fine Art, in historic Sperryville
- SPAC Gallery, inside the Marketplace
Not yet placed
- Artful Friends Gallery is on the roster, but its tour page doesn't give a location.
From the county's side, Gay Street and Main Street in Sperryville are already part of the regular routine: errands, dinner, a walk through town. Tour weekend brings more cars to both villages. A gallery you can reach on any trip into town is a poor use of a Saturday afternoon that private studios are open for only twice a year.
Twenty-seven studios, and most profiles give no address
This year's tour has more studios than last year's. The 2025 Main Gallery showed work from 23 studios and seven galleries. In 2026 those 23 established studios return, and three new artists plus one returning artist bring the total to 27. The gallery count is the same. All of the growth is on the studio side.
A few studio profiles describe where they are. Most don't:
- Mullany Art Studios is in Flint Hill's former apple-packing warehouse. Tom and Kerrie Mullany show oil painting, carved wood, Venetian plaster, charcoal drawing, linocut, handprinted paper and bookbinding.
- Margaret Rogers works in a studio on the Thornton River, behind her family's coffee roastery and gallery in Sperryville. She works in graphite, ink wash and intaglio, and guest artist Kat Habib is showing stoneware.
- Tim Carrington and Kathleen Stewart both list their studios as off Tiger Valley Road. Carrington paints in oil, with guest Luke Christopher showing photography. Stewart works in oil, pastel and mixed media.
- KC Cromwell turns wooden bowls, vases and furniture in a studio on a hill behind his home.
- Charles Tompkins lists Washington, Virginia, and shows silver prints and giclée photographs.
Most of the other profiles describe the work and not the location. Alfred Regnery makes hand-crafted furniture, especially Windsor chairs, and guest Audrey Regnery shows handwoven beadwork jewelry. Elena Rousseau combines canvas, plaster, pigments, gold leaf and fragments of historic giltwood. At River District Potters, Sara Adams and Nancy Nord make ceramics. Their guests are Devin Sherwood, who shows ink drawings, and Dennis King, who shows watercolor. Hans Gerhard paints in acrylic and builds sculpture from found objects and recycled iron and steel.
RAAC's participation guidelines require every studio and gallery to provide enough parking and visitor access. Getting there is the hard part. The tour map is the only document that puts all 27 studios on the same roads.
The four studios that weren't on last year's map
The four additions are where the extra studios come from, and each one adds a place to the route that wasn't there in 2025. Rappahannock News profiled the three new artists in September, and RAAC's own tour post covers all four.
Summer Alexander grew up in Rappahannock, in a house her father built in the late 1970s, and moved back in spring 2021. She started working with fiber that year and got her own loom in 2025. She weaves cotton, wool and alpaca. For her first tour she plans to show wool throws, scarves, shawls and hand towels. She'll also have looms at different stages of warping and will demonstrate some of the steps behind the work. Her studio profile places her outside Flint Hill. One tour post headlines her as "Summer Anderson," but the article text and the studio roster both use Alexander.
Grazyna Hagen came to the United States from Poland in 1975 to earn a master's degree in architecture at Howard University, and she later taught there for seven years. On the tour she's showing oil and watercolor paintings.
Mary Ann Sevick makes wheel-thrown stoneware.
Jennifer Babcock returns after several years away. She paints in oil, and her guests are Polly Scoville, who shows colored-pencil drawings, and Christopher Timothy, who shows photographic prints.
Last year, KC Cromwell gave wood-turning demonstrations at 2 p.m. both days, and Dennis Barry, Jason Goldman, Rosabel Goodman, Alfred Regnery, River District Potters, Kathleen Stewart and others also demonstrated. For 2026, Alexander's weaving is the only demonstration announced so far. The map and the tour newsletter are the places to check for any times added later.
Washington School answers the address question
The Main Gallery is back at Washington School, 567 Mount Salem Avenue in Washington. It hangs representative work from every studio and gallery on the tour in one room. The range covers painting, furniture, drawing and engraving, sculpture, stained glass, ceramics, mosaics, photography, printmaking, woodworking, jewelry, bookbinding and glasswork. The walls also show collaborative pieces by county students and their art teachers. Printed maps will be available here on tour weekend.
That makes the school the place to sort 27 studios down to the five or six you'll actually drive to. You can see a Windsor chair, a giltwood panel and a stoneware bowl side by side in the same hour, take a map, and then decide whether your afternoon heads toward Flint Hill, Tiger Valley Road or the Thornton River.
Planning a studio weekend
- Get the map early. RAAC says the downloadable map will go up on fallarttour.org in late October and will also go out in the tour newsletter. The map page says to expect it about a week before the tour, which puts it close to the end of the month. You can sign up for the newsletter now, so the map arrives by email and you don't have to check the website.
- Group studios by road. Once the map is out, cluster your picks. The Mullany studio and Alexander's both point toward Flint Hill. Carrington and Stewart are both off Tiger Valley Road. Rogers is in Sperryville, a short walk from Thornton River Art, Haley Fine Art and SPAC Gallery.
- Start one day at Washington School. Use the Main Gallery to narrow your list, then spend the rest of the day on studios.
- Fit in the photo contest and raffle. The tour photography contest is back, and photos sent in from the weekend may be published in Rappahannock News. The Inn at Little Washington has again donated a dinner for two to the tour's raffle.
If your route passes through Amissville, it may also go past a newer stop on the county's weekend circuit. Rappahannock News reported in September that Janelle Huffman has opened Hoof 'n' Feather Farm Store at 129 Hinsons Ford Road. It sells farm-raised meat, baked goods and homemade products. The paper gave its hours as Saturday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday 1 to 5 p.m. Hoof 'n' Feather was one of two new stops on this year's Rappahannock County Farm Tour in September.
Many tour studios are outbuildings and workshops on the artists' own land: a converted packing warehouse, a studio up the hill behind the house, a building by the river. If you've been thinking about what a studio, shop or barn could look like on Rappahannock acreage of your own, Will Driskill knows these back roads and the properties along them well. Contact Will.
