Unlike the bustling "open studios" of the Torpedo Factory in Virginia and other public art centers of that model, The Alameda Artworks serves not as a tourist attraction but as a place for artists to retreat from the public eye and realize their creative vision within a supportive community of colleagues. Today 21 studios house work ranging from the kinetic bronze sculptures of Barbara Jacobsohn Phelps to traditional pastel portraits by Tonya Carpenter.

The Alameda Artworks will be open to the public, however, on May 17 and 18, when the artists participate in the final weekend of Silicon Valley Open Studios.

The building itself underwent many incarnations, including that of a civic auditorium and a roller rink, before being purchased in 1991 by Falko Forbrich. Forbrich initially built only seven studios in 1992, but after briefly leasing them out to an arts center, Forbrich reclaimed them and built the other 14, renting them out to artists on an individual basis. Today, because of the popularity of the Artworks and the infrequent turnover, he maintains a constant waiting list.

One of the newer artists to occupy the Artworks, Manli Chao has been sharing a studio with three other artists since January of this year. An abstract expressionist with Rothko-esque attention to the color relationship, she paints with "color as the main character" in her work. Paintings from her newest series, "The Bluest Eye," dominate the tiny space in which she works with huge, black, strokes surrounded by variations of blue and purple.

Chao, originally from Taiwan, drew inspiration for her series from the book of the same name by Toni Morrison. The Bluest Eye is told from the perspective of a young African American girl who, as she grows up, wishes for the American beauty ideal of blonde hair and blue eyes that she feels might transform her life of poverty, incest and violence.

"The character struggles to be the other," Chao explains. "She tries to find her identity through all of her difficulties, and finally she realizes that you cannot imitate anyone else. You have to be yourself—you have to be proud of what you are. But there is a lot of sadness in realizing that. I chose the blue and purple colors, the cool colors, to represent that sadness, but I also used very strong shapes, to represent the strong mind."

Chao describes her working process as one in which compositional elements and colors are added in a gradual process—a combination of spontaneity and deliberate focus—adding and subtracting until the painting achieves its final purpose, where, as she says in an artist's statement, "there is no longer anything I can add or take away."

Next door, on a seemingly different planet, the spacious studio of thirtysomething pop artist Ewik, decorated in a style best described as '60s-era mod, is peopled with paintings and sketches of cartoon-like characters. The most famous of these, "Miss. Jevious"—depicted in various acts of villainy while clad in a black fur bolero-style jacket, high black boots, a jester's hat and generally not much else—is representative of the artist's character-based approach to his work.

"I like the idea of developing a character in my mind that has a past, present and future and taking portraits or snapshots of them," explains Ewik, known in more pedestrian circles as Eric Rider. "There's something similar about all of them, but they all have different influences. Miss. Jevious' influences are Emma Peel of The Avengers, some of the Bond girls, cartoon characters, ex-girlfriends ..." he grins. "Well, a lot of different influences there."

Though he plans to move on to Los Angeles eventually, where he believes there is a larger market for "lowbrow" art of his type, he has taken full advantage of technological expertise gained working in the heart of Silicon Valley by developing an extensive e-commerce site hawking stickers, posters, art cards, etchings, paintings, and even body art featuring his nubile characters.

Around the corner, David Lippenberger has just started on prepping two new canvases for his own trademark portraits, which feature the same man with an elongated head and a non-expression, a theme he's been working on for about five years.

Through the portraits Lippenberger has said, he represents not just himself but men in general and the disparity between society's expectations and the reality of the male interior life, a pressure that is revealed through what some have called the subjects' "stretched-thin" quality.

"It takes time to get a feeling of what it's about," he says of the past five years being dedicated to essentially the same subject. "It's like anything that people do. Some people are in a bad relationship again and again—after enough of them they see what they're doing, a pattern. But the first one, they don't. It's kind of the same thing with art. The more I've done it, the more I've come to understand what it's about."

Where Lippenberger addresses men's relationship to society in general, on the other side of the Artworks in the "short hall," Lynn Elliott Letterman's Tree of Art examines women's place in the world of postmodern art. Letterman started on the 6-foot-by-7-foot piece in the mid-1990s after working as a docent in the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and studying contemporary art in depth.

Through her studies she came to notice that women didn't gain serious recognition as artists until the later part of the 20th century. The Tree of Art, which lists the names of major artists on leaves hanging off branches labeled after artistic movements such as "post-animation" and "pluralism," shows the increased recognition of female artists through the years. A similar piece, as yet uncompleted, explores various cultural representations of Eve, with apples and branches of a tree featuring Biblical and literary quotes about her role in history and in shaping humankind.

Letterman, who has had a studio at the Artworks for six years, explains that despite the variety of artists currently working there, the sense of community is significant.

"We're all very together here," she says. "And we all respect each other's work. If we're working on a piece of artwork and we're stuck, we can't seem to get through to the middle of it, we'll ask another artist, 'What do you think? Does this look right? Does it need something?' All of us are so creative that we can give advice on what might look good or how to handle something."

Chao says that the encouragement of fellow artists is the most vital aspect of the community studio environment.

"Sometimes you get really frustrated" with your work, she says. "We all know that this is a creative process—always up and down and up and down. We know that, but we cannot take the emotion involved with that. But if you have friends in that situation they can tell you it will be all right, that the inspiration will come back. It helps emotionally."

Rider, who formerly worked out of a studio in a Japantown warehouse that he characterizes as "dark" and "dreary," says, "The community here, the fact that it's light and bright and friendly and open, just seems to foster creativity."

Photograph by Sean Penello Male Reality: Artist David Lippenberger's work explores society's expectations and the reality of the male interior life.

"It's a circle of friends," says Forbrich, "a family."

The Alameda Artworks will participate in Silicon Valley Open Studios May 17­18. The studios will be open to the public 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. both days, and the artists will be available to discuss their work. For more information on Open Studios, visit www.svopenstudios.org.