There’s no shortage of barns in Yamhill County, but chances are good you’ve not seen one like Joshua Simonson’s.

Granted, it’s small, but the walls are covered, from the floor to the ceiling, far out of reach, with paintings—nearly a hundred of them—that Simonson has done over the years. He first picked up a brush in his mid-20s in Los Angeles after deciding a theater career wasn’t for him.

Now back in Oregon wine country where he grew up, Simonson is a contractor by day, which makes for long, busy weeks. On the weekend, he paints, though there is some overlap between the two. Discarded wood from remodeling jobs like the Troon Vineyard & Farm tasting room and the new Pinch restaurant in downtown McMinnville that would otherwise be recycled is repurposed—as frames for the canvases Simonson stretches or panels for the paint itself.

Simonson for the next two weekends joins 17 other artists on the 30th annual Art Harvest Studio Tour of Yamhill County who’ll be opening their studios in the harvest tour for the first time. All told this year’s tour will include a whopping sixty-three artists, clustered primarily in the McMinnville/Carlton area, Newberg and Dundee, and Amity.

The self-guided tour runs 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Oct. 4-6 and Oct. 11-12, and the weather looks to be about as perfect as fall days get; sunny and temps in the 70s, and no rain—at least, not on the opening weekend. Tour entry buttons are $10 and are available at all studios on the tour including some businesses, such as Artemis Fox Studio, Currents Gallery, The Merri Artist, Pacific Frame & Gallery, and the Velvet Monkey Tea Shop (where you’ll also find some of the artists) in McMinnville.

The autumn tour is an occasion for creativity to intersect with fellowship and camaraderie, even if the conversation occasionally turns away from art and you discover—as I did with Simonson—that you have many mutual friends and acquaintances, so many, in fact, that you wonder how it is you never met this person before.

Maybe because when they’re not working day jobs or with family, they’re making art.

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“It’s more like therapy,” Simonson said when I asked him if he regarded his time in the studio as play. “It’s nice to get away from kids and everything else and zone out on something. I’m chained to my phone all week long, and it’s frantic. This gives me an opportunity to focus intently on something.”

I’ve yet to visit an artist’s studio where I didn’t see several pieces that I loved, and interestingly, my favorites in Simonson’s barn were those that to varying degrees recalled the work of another. “This one,” I said, pointing at one, “reminds me of Clive Barker,” the L.A. horror writer who also paints. A larger piece has shades of Basquiat; an early attempt at self-portraiture, which I found endearing but which Simonson modestly downplays, looks vaguely Picasso-esque.

There’s a little bit of everything—landscapes, abstract pieces, faces and more. During a preview show earlier this month at The Rose of Third Street in McMinnville, he sold one. He’s not sure what to expect this weekend, but downplays that, too.

“I really don’t expect many people,” he said, noting that the gravel road where he and his family live might serve as a deterrent.

I’ve always thought that’s part of the appeal of these tours—it’s a chance to get outside one’s usual stomping grounds and see a bit of the local country that you haven’t seen, just minutes from your house. Simonson, after all, is only a couple of miles west of Amity. And a few minutes south of him, you’ll find another artist: tour veteran Deb Conrad, whose work includes enamels, watercolor and nature printing.

With more than sixty artists participating, there really is a bit of everything: Oil, watercolor, pastel, acrylic, tempera and cold wax painting, ceramics both decorative and functional, glass, woodworking, gourd art, jewelry, furniture, paper-carving, textiles, book arts, bronze and steel sculpture and more.

The tour turns thirty this year, which makes it one of the oldest events of its type on the West Coast. As has become tradition in the last few years, you can check out the work of all artists at the Chehalem Cultural Center in Newberg, where there’s a sampler show in the Parrish Gallery on the ground floor. Christine Joy Swanson’s oil and watercolor painting can be found on the second-floor gallery.

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The tour is a program of the Arts Alliance of Yamhill County. For more information about this year’s tour, a complete list of artists and maps, visit the tour website.