The Storefront Artist Project is organizing a Halloween afternoon of “Eye Candy” -- open studios, exhibits, and arts projects -- Sunday, October 31st, from 1pm to 5pm on Pittsfield’sNorth Street.

Activities include Mexican-style sugar skull decorating in artist Maggie Mailer’s studio, a traditional Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) craft. Hector on Stilts frontman Jeb Colwell will accompany the artmaking activities with Spanish songs played on acoustic guitar in the studio. Mailer’s studio is located at 297 North Street. Installations by artists Nicole Peskin, Ven Voisey, and Rachael Champion. Upstairs in the Wright Building, located at 255 North Street, jeweler Raissa Bump, fiber artist Fern Leslie, and painters Jeanet Ingalls and Colleen Surprise Jones will be welcoming visitors to their studios.

Artist Annie Laurie will be holding an inaugural open house at her new studio, located on the second floor at 311 North Street at the corner of Union Street. The Think Pink group art show will also be open to visitors at 116 North Street during Eye Candy open studio hours. The show features the work of over twenty artists, including Karen Arp-Sandel, Lesley Beck, Morris Bennett, Diana Gala, Paul Graubard, Alan Hayes, Jeanet Ingalls, Colleen Surprise Jones, Fern Leslie, Maggie Mailer, Ellen Metropole, Kelly Miesl, Anne Pasko, Jude Patoka, Anne Roland, Gabrielle Senza, Rosemary Starace, Janis Theodore, Doug Truth, and Joe Wheaton. The show is a benefit for arts programs for women living with breast cancer. The studio of artist Douglass Truth, also at 116 North Street, will be open as well.

The new two-man show at the Lichtenstein Center for the Arts at 28 Renne Avenue, just off North Street, will also be open to the public during Eye Candy open studio hours. The featured artists are Paul Graubard, whose work can be seen at www.paulgraubard.com, and Guy Beining, a poet and collage artist. Beining has published seven artists' books and six books of poetry, as well as numerous chapbooks, and has exhibited at Simon’s Rock College of Bard, the Center for Book Arts in New York City, and elsewhere. Graubard’s work is in the permanent collection of the American Museum of Visionary Art in Baltimore.The artists at 55 North Street, including Scott Cole, Eric Drury, Gail Downey, and Phylene Amuso, will be opening their studios as well. Artist and choreographer Stefanie Weber’s studio at 55 North Street will feature an installation of costumes and sculpture created for her interactive sculpture/performance Oschun Exuvia, which premiered at RiverMASS this summer. Sculptor Peter Dudek will also be showing work. Word Street, a community literacy and writing center for youth located at 163 North Street, will be featuring twenty-minute Halloween stories and giving away miniature zines (basically homemade magazines) to visitors. Following the Eye Candy open studios, the Berkshire Music Hall at 30 Union Street will be hosting two special Halloween screenings of a locally filmed horror film short, entitled “Vampires Die” by Berkshire filmmaker Theodore Collatos. The film was nominated for best short and festival director’s favorite at the Cine-macabre Film Festival in Georgia. “Vampires Die” screens at 6:30pm and 7:30pm and tickets are $5. Downtown dining establishments that will be open during Eye Candy hours include Bellissimo Dolce café, at 444 North Street, and the House of India restaurant, located at 261 North Street.For more information on Eye Candy, visit www.storefrontartist.org or email mail@storefrontartist.org.