By Serena Solomon
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
MIDTOWN — A budding Hell's Kitchen art studio tour is looking for more artists, venues and corporate sponsors for its second season this coming May.
The Artists in the Kitchen tour not only allows artists to open their studios to the public, but also showcases local businesses, which become makeshift galleries. For the first tour, last November, more than 50 venues featured roughly 150 artists. Tour founder Michael Felber hopes to build on that.
"There is no other open studio tour in Midtown," said Felber. "Even in the middle of the biggest commercial area there is so much creativity happening."
The festival is planned for May 21 to 23.
Janet Restino, a multi-disciplinary artist, saw roughly two dozen people come through her home and studio during the last tour. She also showed work at two other venues in the neighborhood and will participate again this spring.
"I have a lot of work. I have been an artist since the 70s," said Restino. "The missing link has always been the distribution and this help with that."
She said she loved seeing the Budweiser signs come down from the walls of neighborhood bars to be replaced by artists' work.
"It is a good idea to invest in the local community and they have a lot of talent here," said Restino.
For Felber, whose background is in social work, he is now volunteering full-time as the event draws nearer, and joked that organizing the artists was as difficult as "herding cats."
He is also looking to find corporate sponsors, new businesses to provide venues and new artists so the tour can give the local art scene maximum exposure.
"This is a new tradition for one of New York's oldest neighborhoods," Felber said.
