Peninsula School of Art

With a beautiful wooded setting and a main building inspired by Door County's octagonal barns, this campus serves as a hub for the area art colony. Especially in summer, visitors can enjoy guided tours of the school on Fridays, view exhibits or register for more than 200 workshops. Classes run for a day, three days or a week spring through fall and cover everything from oil painting and metalwork to pastels and pottery. Artists from across the country come for school's biggest event, the Plein Air Festival (doorcountypleinair.com) in late July. It's an ideal time to catch artists in action, painting at easels set up in Door County harbors, along the wooded shore or above favorite vistas. Paintings are auctioned to the public in Fish Creek.