Verde Valley Spring Open Studios Tour

Sedona’s red rock formations have been drawing artists since at least the 1940s, when painter Nassan Gobran staked a claim on the light along Oak Creek and established one of the Southwest’s earliest artist colonies in a landscape that simply refuses to behave the way light behaves elsewhere. The Verde Valley Spring Open Studios Tour, running April 24–26, 2026, builds on that long tradition by opening more than 50 working artist studios across Sedona, the Village of Oak Creek, Cornville, Cottonwood, Camp Verde, and Clarkdale for a free, self-guided tour that rewards the visitor willing to put a little geographic ambition into a long weekend.

The tour format is deliberately unmediated. There are no queues, no guided group convoys, no curatorial filters between visitor and artist. You collect the tour map, set your own pace, and walk into the working studios of painters, potters, sculptors, jewelers, weavers, and mixed-media artists at the moment of making. You see the works in progress alongside the finished pieces. You see the reference photographs pinned to the wall, the tools arranged by the morning light, the things that accumulate in a room where someone has been working seriously for years. It is a different experience from a gallery opening, and for the right visitor, it is considerably more instructive.

The Route and What to Expect

Sedona and the Verde Valley form a geographic arc along Oak Creek that connects canyon-red Sedona to the broader Verde River drainage below, where the landscape opens into high desert grassland and the towns take on a quieter, more working character than the resort corridors of upper Sedona. The tour’s six communities represent that full spectrum, and plotting a two- or three-day route that moves through each allows for the kind of comparison between studio environments that reveals how much place shapes creative practice. The studios in Cornville feel different from the ones in Cottonwood, which feel different again from the cliff-view workrooms of upper Sedona. That differentiation is part of the tour’s texture.

Admission is free throughout. Studios are open 10:00 AM to 5:00 PM each day. Individual artists set their own availability within those hours, and the tour map identifies which studios are open which days. Purchasing work directly from the artist is encouraged and constitutes a significant share of the event’s economic purpose for the participating studios.

> Quick Tips
> Download or collect the printed studio map before April 24; it is the navigational tool that makes the self-guided format work. Wear comfortable walking shoes regardless of which studios you plan to visit, as parking areas can be some distance from studio entrances in the more remote sections of the tour. Verde Valley temperatures in late April run in the low 80s; a water bottle and sun protection are standard gear.

Red Rock Country and Its Water: Oak Creek and the Verde River

The Verde Valley is not a desert in the way most of Arizona is. The Verde River, one of the last perennial rivers in the state, runs through the valley floor in a continuous green corridor that supports cottonwood and willow stands dense enough to feel subtropical against the surrounding scrub. Oak Creek Canyon, north of Sedona on Highway 89A, is a swimming and picnicking corridor of particular reputation in spring, when snowmelt keeps the water cold and clear and the canyon walls throw afternoon shadow across the creek by mid-afternoon. Slide Rock State Park at the canyon’s base offers a natural sandstone water slide worn smooth by the creek that has remained one of the state’s more singular swimming destinations since the Pendley homestead opened it to visitors in the 1980s.

> If You’re Going With Kids
> Slide Rock State Park, seven miles north of Sedona on Highway 89A, is one of the more effectively entertaining natural attractions in the American Southwest for children who are comfortable in moving water. The natural sandstone slide and the surrounding swimming holes require no equipment beyond a swimsuit. The park charges a vehicle entry fee; arrive early on weekday mornings to avoid crowds.

Find Your Spot on Lake.com

For visitors converting the Open Studios Tour into a full Verde Valley weekend, Lake.com’s Sedona and northern Arizona listings include rental properties close enough to Oak Creek and the Verde River corridor to make the studio tour a morning activity and the canyon country an afternoon one.