Andrew Morse works at the pottery wheel at the Gilpin County Community Center.
Grateful Dead art and memorabilia at Ghost Town Gallery.
Brian O’Donnell’s artwork at Ghost Town Gallery.
A work in progress at Brian O’Donnell’s Ghost Town Gallery.
Local art fills the walls at Litwood & Artisan Friends.
Ted Garcia’s thick “Funky Chunky” painting style.
Ted Garcia works on a painting at his Black Hawk gallery.
Susan Green’s handmade pottery and soaps at Very Nice Brewing Company.
GILPIN COUNTY — I have lived in Gilpin County for a long time, but the Peak to Peak Studio Tour has a way of reminding me how much creativity is tucked into these mountains.
On September 20, I spent the day making my way through the Gilpin County stops on the 2026 tour. I found pottery, painting, sculpture, handmade goods, and even art hiding in a ghost town.
Some places were familiar. Others gave me a reason to slow down and look around a little longer.
Clay at the Community Center
My first stop was the pottery studio in the Gilpin County Community Center on Norton Drive.
There is a lot more happening behind that studio door than you might realize. Wheels, shelves, glazes, works in progress, and finished pieces fill the space.
Potter Andrew Morse first threw a pot in 1978, when he was a freshman in high school. He went on to major in pottery in college and worked as a production potter and drum maker in Gold Hill.
He likes making the complicated stuff, including covered casserole dishes and teapots, where all the pieces have to fit together and actually work.
For Morse, part of the draw is the “endless possibilities.” Pottery, he said, also requires enough focus to quiet his brain.
The studio offers classes for beginners and more experienced potters, making this one Studio Tour stop where visitors may find themselves thinking, I could try that.
Pottery with a side of beer
Just down the road, the next stop combined two things that work surprisingly well together: art and beer.
At Very Nice Brewing Company on Jankowski Drive, Susan Green had a colorful collection of handmade pottery on display, along with her homemade soaps.
Green got into pottery after a friend asked her to take a class. Otherwise, she said, she might never have discovered it.
She works in small batches and doesn't take commissions. She would rather walk into the studio, see what inspires her, and make whatever comes to mind.
“I gotta just create what I want to create, and if you like it, you like it,” Green said.
Lately, she has been especially happy with her mugs, which are useful, giftable, and fun to make. There was also a whimsical little mushroom house in the mix that was pretty hard not to love.
Lots of artists under one roof
The tour then headed downhill into Black Hawk, where Litwood & Artisan Friends sits at 221 Gregory Street.
This one is dangerous if you are the kind of person who tells yourself you are “just looking.”
Around 30 artists currently have work represented in the shop, with individual spaces packed with handmade and locally created items.
The result is a place where your eye keeps jumping from one thing to another. Art, clothing, gifts, and plenty of unexpected finds make it worth wandering through instead of rushing to the next stop.
And, considering it sits right in Gregory Street Plaza, there really isn't much excuse not to poke your head inside.
Getting funky and chunky
A few steps away, Ted Garcia Fine Art offers an entirely different experience.
Ted Garcia has been developing his thick oil-painting technique for years. The style is called impasto, although Garcia has a much easier name for it: “Funky Chunky.”
The paintings have so much texture that they begin to feel almost sculptural. Garcia prepares the oil paint until it reaches the consistency he wants and then applies the thick sections at once. Some take months to completely dry.
Unlike most galleries, visitors can even touch many of them.
The gallery also has actual sculpture. Garcia recently completed a bronze commissioned by the City of Black Hawk as a retirement gift. Creating the original clay sculpture took about 150 hours in just 17 days.
The gallery also has small pieces, cards, magnets, and mini originals, so enjoying local art doesn't necessarily mean bringing home a giant canvas.
I could spend a lot of time in this gallery. Unfortunately, there were more stops to make.
Art meets history in Central City
My next stop was supposed to be the Gilpin County Arts Association at 117 Eureka Street in Central City. Unfortunately, I caught the gallery with its doors closed.
This one wasn't exactly a mystery to me, though. I've spent plenty of time inside Washington Hall over the years, and the building is almost as interesting as the art.
Built in 1862, Washington Hall was originally the county jail and later served as the courthouse. Today, it is the oldest continuously used public building in Colorado, with some of the original hand-hewn logs still visible along the staircase leading upstairs.
At the top of those stairs is the Gilpin County Arts Association, established in 1947, which held its first art show the following year.
The gallery features work in all sorts of mediums, including paintings, photography, pottery, jewelry, fiber art, and sculpture.
And the space itself is worth seeing. Stone walls, wood floors, natural light, several rooms to wander through, and a garden tucked into the hillside behind the building.
I may have missed it on Studio Tour day, but this is one Gilpin County art stop I've been lucky enough to visit many times before.
Art in a ghost town
The final stretch took me out of Central City and into Russell Gulch, where art gets considerably more unusual.
Ghost Town Gallery is at 190 Russell Gulch Road, next to the Ghost Town Disc Golf Course. Artist Brian O'Donnell's work fills the gallery inside a historic mountain home surrounded by old mining buildings, mountain scenery, and a rather challenging disc golf course.
I've visited several times, and it never really gets old.
O'Donnell took over the gallery space in 2013. Some of his work reaches back decades, including art he once put on T-shirts and sold while following The Grateful Dead tour in the 1980s.
Years later, at a Dark Star Orchestra show, he spotted someone wearing one of those old shirts. The man had bought it from him in Richmond, Virginia, in the mid-1980s.
Now 76, O'Donnell is still painting.
When I asked how many more paintings we might get from him, his answer was simple.
“Oh, I just keep painting till the end,” he said. “Like Willie Nelson.”
That seems like a pretty good philosophy for an artist.
Living in a quiet mountain community gives O'Donnell plenty of time to work, particularly in winter. He said the solitude of an old Rocky Mountain ghost town is ideal for painters and writers.
After looking through the gallery, there was still the disc golf course outside, fall colors in the trees, old buildings to wander past, and plenty more to see.
Not a bad way to end a September afternoon of art in Gilpin County.
