However, for Silicon Valley Visual Arts, it's the perfect way for local artists to gain some exposure for their creations and build names for themselves.

For the 19th year in a row, the organization is producing its annual Silicon Valley Open Studios event during the first three full weekends in May. More than 470 artists from Northern California will open the doors to their private studios and workspaces and let the public in to see and touch their creations.

Janet Fullmer Bajorek of Los Gatos, one of this year's participants, has been a professional artist for more than 20 years and says she will never forget her very first exhibit in 1983 at the local El Gatito Gallery.

"It was a great little cooperative gallery operated by about 30 area artists, right next door to the Los Gatos Coffee Roasting Co. on Main Street, until the building was damaged in the 1989 earthquake," she remembers.

That exhibit helped give Bajorek's art career a little kick-start, and since then she has shown her drawings and sculptures in many galleries in California, Minnesota and New York. She also operated her own Iguana Galleries in San Francisco in 1995 and 1996 until she decided to move the gallery into her home in Los Gatos. In the late 1990s she displayed her work at the James Bond Gallery in downtown Los Gatos, and now frequently shows her work at many shows put on by the Association of Clay and Glass Artists of California.

Bajorek says her creations fall into two groups. The first consists of sculptures that are meant to be "a statement about our culture," she says. "[They are] representational and figurative, and viewers find [them] easy to understand and relate to. The work is both serious and humorous."

She says the second group features works that are more abstract.

"[They] can be called 'cubistic' and are composed of geometric shapes and forms joined to create a new object, typically a figure suggesting a human," she explains.

Bajorek's love of creating art has been a lifelong passion.

"I have loved to draw and sculpt clay since I was a child," she says. "My grandfather, Rudolph Dien, was a sculptor who worked for Julia Morgan and William Randolph Hearst in San Simeon and on Hollywood movie sets in the 1920s. Although he died before I was born, I think hearing about him and seeing his work probably encouraged my interest in art."

In other words, artistic talent definitely runs in the family's blood--Bajorek's sister, Linda Fullmer, is also an artist and paints with watercolors. The two will join together to present their work during Open Studios.

Other local artists participating in Open Studios are Margaret Berge Hartge, Audrey Armstrong, Cecilia Martner, Ruth Geredes, Joyce Steinfeld, Harley Newsom, Maralyn Miller, Ginger Crawford Tolonen, Ed Lucey, Marco Zecchin, Tonya Carpenter, Ellen Keiffer, Michelle Waters, Philip Lange, Elizabeth Parashis and Elke Groves, as well as Ginny Lenoir from Monte Sereno.

For detailed maps and lists of the participating artists and their locations, visit the Silicon Valley Open Studios website. Studios are open from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.

So grab a map and walk right in--the artists will be waiting.

For more information, including a list of the participating cities on each weekend, the names of participating artists in each city and maps to their locations, visit www.svopenstudios.org.