“My art is about Harlem because it is my context. I have adopted Harlem as my home, as my point of reference, and its people and landscape are inevitably my subjects,” explains Harlem artist Montserrat Daubon who, since moving to Harlem about four years ago, has constantly felt “welcome and protected” as both a resident and an artist. Daubon, a sculptor and painter of six years who works in oils, charcoals and clay, represents the redeveloping (or “gentrifying”) Uptown Manhattan and the neighborhoods’ recent influx of new residents, many artists. She is one of a hundred visual artists whose work and workspaces will be featured during this weekend’s free, two-day Harlem Open Artist Studio walking tour.

The local-artist-in-their-habitat walking tour is in its second year and ranges from the west to east from 96th St. up to 155th St. Although the tour has grown, its goal is identical: fostering “artistic expression by uniting and promoting the artists of Harlem and strengthening the community by stimulating awareness of is contemporary arts,” says Ruben Sinha, the festival's founder and executive producer.

“[Harlem] is truly an amazing community where everybody knows everybody and people are just friendly...People genuinely look out for each other more here,” explains Sinha, an abstract painter who moved to Harlem in 2000, and soon after met up with many other recently transplanted artists—all of whom had something in common. While rents have risen for newer residents, Sinha still finds it artist-friendly.

“I moved to Harlem because I couldn’t afford to live and work as an artist anywhere else [in the city],” says Sinha. “And so did a lot of other artists—because it was affordable to set up a live/work space as an artist here.”

Montserrat Daubon, who moved to her spacious apartment on East 116th in Harlem in 2002, shares Sinha's views of her newly adapted hood. “It's the only neighborhood I’ve experienced in New York where people acknowledge each other's existence,” she says, adding that that factor might have something to do with the recent “wave of…artists moving in” that she's witnessed.

Sinha refers to these recent transplants as “the young gentrifiers” but not in a cynical way—noting that there is a positive trend among this influx that includes many former Harlem residents returning home.

“Some of Harlem's young gentrifiers grew up here and moved out but now moved back here again.”

The festival also features some Harlem artists who’ve been Harlem residents for decades, long before the recent wave arrived. These include such artists as Dindga McCannon and embroidery-fabric artist Laura Gadson.

Sept 9-10. Harlem Open Artist Studio Tour, betw. 96th to 155th Sts. (shuttle service available at