This Saturday and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., head to 52 O Street NW for their annual open studio event. This 28,000 square foot building has housed four floors of art studios since 1979, and at this weekend’s open studio, you can meet and mingle with twenty four of the building’s current artists. Open studio events like this one give viewers an inside look at each artist’s process, and allow for a more relaxed, personal and invigorating experience than a typical gallery. Work at 52 O Street spans varying mediums and styles, including collage, drawing, animation, sculpture, painting, film, jewelry, photography and music.

This week, DCist toured the studios with resident artist Lisa Marie Thalhammer to give you a sneak peak. Thalhammer, who has exhibited at Transformer, G Fine Arts, ArtDC and PULSE New York, occupies one of the few live/work spaces in the building: a colorful, funky loft space filled to the rim with the artwork of her and her two studio mates. Thalhammer’s work, including the fun image from the Lot Lizard series pictured left, explores ideas of gender, identity and power. If you don’t think you can afford an original, Thalhammer will also have some t-shirts for sale, so you can flaunt her funky heroines all over town.

In the same studio, Thom Flynn creates “paintings” from thick blocks of torn street posters. He claims fifty percent of his art making process occurs on the street, as he scavenges the city, using a crowbar to reclaim layers and layers of ads and posters from our neighborhoods. Returning to the studio, Flynn gives the forgotten posters a new home by re-layering and adhering massive quantities of papered color, text and imagery onto new surfaces. Covered with clear resin, the final pieces take on a glossy, sculptural quality, often resembling topography.

Upstairs in another studio, artistic duo Holly and Ashlee Temple create mixed media works, many of which are beautiful and ornate collages referencing history and iconography, like their Little Saint, pictured right. Interestingly, half of this sister pair resides in Denver, yet they still create all of their work together — by sharing art journals, exchanging small pieces in the mail, and meeting in D.C. every three or four months for intensive studio time. This weekend, the Temples will be exhibiting several large five foot square paintings, as well as numerous smaller paper works.

Back downstairs, painter Raye Leith is an expert at portraits; her street-facing light-filled studio is lined floor to ceiling with them. While Leith often paints portraits of the well-known, she also feels the need to respond to her immediate environment, and will be working with local youth on an urban photo essay this summer. Leith does work on commission, so if you’ve been looking for a portrait artist, bring your most expressive head shots.

Images of Lisa Thalhammer's Lot Lizard and Holly and Ashlee Temple's Little Saint courtesy of the artists.

The 52 O Street Open Studios is this Saturday and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. The event is free.