The annual event, which this year is happening May 17 and 18 in Willow Glen, takes the form of self-guided tours in communities from South San Francisco to Gilroy and promotes the work of more than 400 artists in a variety of media.

Among the participating Willow Glen artists are four women who continue to expand the range of their work.

Mary Medrano, whose studio is located at 818 Nevada Ave. just off Bird Avenue, will show about 20 mixed media paintings she has created since she lost her job as an ad agency art director in the dot-com bust.

Medrano frequently starts a painting by gluing one of her own enlarged photos onto a canvas. She then paints a design or scene on the canvas and over all or parts of the photo.

In Survivor, for example, Medrano used colorful oils to greatly enhance her photo of a wild gray kitten named Smoky. His colorful personality is now perfectly expressed, she says, through the colors, but she leaves his intense eyes untouched.

Her favorite subjects are crows because she considers them to be "playful, intelligent souls." In another one of her works, Guardian, Medrano shows a silhouette of a mother crow cuddling with her baby in their nest. In the background, the deep colors of an almost faded sunset provide a realistic accent, which is a rarity in Medrano's crow paintings.

Medrano says her abstract paintings, such as a series with earth themes and metalwork, receive widely varied interpretations, as do her recent paintings of masks.

"It's so cool that people make up their own stories of what they see in my paintings," she says. "It is almost never what I painted."

Lisa Paige will also be at 818 Nevada Ave. and will show her textile wall hangings for the first time. About a year ago, after making quilts for several years, Paige created a quilted wall hanging for her sister's office in Hawaii. An art consultant gave it such high praise that Paige was inspired to create more than a dozen wall hangings out of a variety of fabrics.

"I think everyone needs a creative outlet, something that is their own unique expression," says Paige, who is also a full-time mother.

Paige's Whim has a golden-hued freestyle flower at its center. Pieces of bamboo-like fabric cross over the quilted black background, giving the piece an Oriental flare.

Another wall hanging is Kilauea, which has a multitude of bold colors representing the lava Paige saw pouring into the ocean in Hawaii.

Like Medrano, Paige has learned about the "eye of the beholder" when it comes to an artist's work. Her wall hanging, Underworld, is done in blue and coppery brown shapes, which she says symbolize stalactites dripping water. At the top is a bird, at least according to several friends.

"Honestly, it was just an abstract shape," Paige insists. "I was going for a jagged look, and I didn't see the bird until someone pointed it out."

Artist Elaine Fleming, 2553 Booksin Ave., is also participating in this year's event, displaying her ceramic bowls. The bowls are noted for their distinctive one-of-a-kind designs. Fleming is now also making one-of-a-kind ceramic serving trays, covered jars and mugs with large handles for larger hands. She will have more than 100 assorted pieces showing at Open Studios.

"People like big bowls especially because they are so versatile," Fleming says. "You can even get stands for them and use them as works of art."

Fleming begins making her pottery by shaping raw clay on her potting wheel. While the formed piece is still wet, she sometimes adds materials to create special textures, or she might make impressions by using items such as seashells. Once the piece is dry she takes it to Blossom Hill Crafts in Los Gatos, where she teaches pottery classes, for its first or "bisque" firing in a manual high-temperature kiln.

After it has cooled, Fleming applies a lead-free glaze. To avoid leaving brush strokes on her pieces, Fleming prefers a special, time-consuming dunking technique to glaze the piece and create a specific multicolored design. Finally, the piece is fired again.

Fleming is also creating 17-inch-high ceramic vases with intricate, highly textured designs she forms by hand on wet clay. The vases can also be used as freestanding legs for small tables with glass tops.

Willow Glen artist Katherine Kindig, 938 Willow Glen Way, will present about 30 of her paintings in her third Open Studios. Her specialties include graceful insects, including butterflies, and a variety of colorful landscape scenes, most of which have abstract elements. She uses her imagination along with ideas from photographs for her paintings, as she did with Dragonfly and its dramatic purple hues. All her work is done in "oil pastel."

"Most people do 'pastel,' which is a chalk, and it has a lot of dust," Kindig says. "I started doing oil pastel when my son was around two because I wanted something nontoxic."

A painting done in oil pastel has a clean finish like a crayon, Kindig says, whereas pastel leaves a chalky residue. A gentle touch of a finger can confirm which media was used.

Although she received a master's degree in art from San José State University in 1976, Kindig didn't begin painting again until three years ago, after taking numerous drawing classes.

"I took a path into high tech and got lost" artistically, Kindig says. "Now I do this as much as I can."

Other scheduled Willow Glen Open Studios participants include Judith Enright, tiles and pottery, 2213 Radio Ave.; Karen Ford, abstracts, 2366 Valencia Court; Carol Worthington Levy, watercolors, 1515 Cherry Garden Lane; Lucy Liew, oils, 2517 Plummer Ave.; M. Morgan, photography and modern imaging, 1664 Fairlawn Ave.; Suzanne Welch, watercolors, 1790 Willow St.; and Roberta Young, abstracts, 1702 Meridian Ave.

Open Studios hours are 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. May 17-18. For further information and maps, visit www.svopenstudios.org or call 650.562.1949.