October Arts Off 75: Seasonal Treats & Studio Tours

Rodney Veal
CET/Think^TV Producer and Community Arts Liaison

The fall season is in full swing, the leaves are beginning their annual transformation, the air is getting a little crisper, and suddenly a drive along I-75 feels less like a commute and more like an invitation to admire the changing world around us. For those of us who love the arts, October is offering up quite the bag of treats. Think of it as a grown-up version of trick-or-treating, except instead of wandering from house to house hoping for the good candy, we get to travel from gallery to gallery, studio to studio, and community to community discovering artists, exhibitions and creative experiences along the way. One of the biggest treats of this season is the return of the “FotoFocus Biennial,” bringing photography and lens-based art into museums, galleries and unexpected spaces throughout Greater Cincinnati, Northern Kentucky, Dayton and beyond.

Part of what makes FotoFocus so much fun is the sheer scale of it. There is no single way to experience it, because you create your own adventure. Pick a neighborhood. Pick a museum. Pick an exhibition that sounds intriguing. Better yet, choose something you know absolutely nothing about and allow yourself to be surprised. And when dozens of exhibitions are happening across the region at the same time, the possibilities for discovery become pretty extraordinary. This is exactly what “Arts Off 75” is all about. Grab a friend, get in the car, head down the road and see where your curiosity takes you. If seeing finished artwork in a gallery is one kind of experience, stepping inside the place where that artwork originates is something else entirely.

There really is something wonderfully revealing about seeing an artist in their natural habitat. And on October 10, The Contemporary Dayton presents the 2026 Dayton Studio Tour, offering the public an opportunity to visit working artists in their studios, meet them face-to-face and get a glimpse of the creative process firsthand. You’ll get to see the brushes, tools, scraps of material, unfinished canvases, experiments, sketches and occasionally the glorious creative chaos that goes into making something. We often only encounter art after all of the creative decisions have been made, but you’ll get to ask: How did you make that? Where did this idea come from? What are you working on now? The tour culminates with an after-party at The Contemporary Dayton from 5 to 7 p.m., giving everyone a chance to gather, compare discoveries and continue the conversation.

That sense of discovery also reflects something I believe deeply about our region: the arts are not some distant thing happening somewhere else. Artists are living and working right here in our neighborhoods. They are our friends, coworkers and neighbors, quietly creating extraordinary things in studios tucked inside buildings we may drive past every day.

Here is my challenge for October: give yourself permission to be curious. Because one of the great joys of living in Southwest Ohio is that creativity is everywhere. Sometimes all we have to do is get off the highway and go looking for it. This October, consider your artistic trick-or-treat bag officially open. Happy hunting, and I hope you discover something wonderful along the way.