For over 40 years, East Bay Open Studios has provided an excellent opportunity for art lovers, collectors, and just the plain nosy who maybe want to see inside their neighbor's spaces.

This year, more than 200 Bay Area artists are included in its catalogue of self-guided tours that can take you all over the East Bay—Berkeley, Pinole, El Cerrito, Livermore, Oakland, and beyond. Everything kicks off on Friday, June 2, at Oakland's historic 16th Street train station with a party and an exhibition of some 100 artists (the soiree is invite-only, but all you have to do is join EBOS to get on the list).

Artist spaces will be open from 11am to 6pm the following two weekends (June 10-11 and June 17-18), and activities at each venue will be determined by the artist. You might encounter light snacks and wine, demos, live music, and opportunities to chat with painters, collagists, and sculptors one-on-one. To get you started, here are nine artists who caught our fancy.

Jade Sea Worm, Katie McCann

Inspired by Victorian-era fairy painters, artist Katie McCann's current work follows her #100dayproject—creating a collage a day for 100 days that she's been previewing on Instagram. Look for whimsical faces painted atop the covers and pages of antique books emulating a mixture of 19^th-century science and fancy. "The intricate and detailed collages that I create are a reflection of a strange world where curious and beautiful creatures exist in a quiet landscape. Each collage represents a page from an imaginary book full of chimeras, hybrids, zoophytes and fairies," say McCann. // Uptown Body & Fender, 410 26th St, Oakland