By Jim O'Sullivan

Cars cruising down Richmond Street once the weather gets cold shine their brake lights through the nippy air or the falling snow. They accelerate again, then stop again at the next house. Go, stop. Rolling tires, brakelights.

"A lot of my neighbors have my wreaths on their doors," Ellen Venis, of Richmond Street in Lower Mills, explains, laughing. "People brake and rubberneck along the street."

Venis bills herself as a designer, but the term doesn't encompass her arsenal of talents.

"Garlands, topiaries, centerpieces, ornaments, garlands, gifts, giftboxes, candles," she ticks off, listing the handmade products she'll be displaying and peddling during her holiday boutique and open studio sessions on October 19, 20, 26, and 27.

And that's just on the table in the front room.

Venis' open house will be one of dozens held on the weekend of Oct. 26 and 27 as part of Dorchester Open Studios, an event organized by the fledgling Dorchester Artists Collaborative. Maps directing visitors to all the viewing places will be available during open studio weekend, and shuttle bus service, starting at the Odwin Learning Center across from Ashmont Station, will be available in next week's Reporter.

The setting for Venis's open house, 103 Richmond Street, is wonderfully convenient for her; she, her husband, Larry, and Jessica, almost three-years-old, live right next door, at 105.

There, in two rooms in the attic, is her usual workspace. Here, she employs her talents and background in graphic arts, design, pastels, painting, prints. Ellen Venis does it all.

She's loved art since high school, she says, majored in and graduated with a degree in it from UMass Boston. She has worked in and ordered products for gift shops over the years. And, she says with another laugh, "I've been overdecorating for myself for years."

Venis, a lifelong Boston resident, tells the story of one year in high school when she and her brother Kevin decided they were fed up with the plastic tree her family trotted out every year. A Christmas tree, they decided, should need water, shed pine needles, and be purchased from a Dorchester store. So Ellen and Kevin volunteered to climb into the attic, of the very same house where she still lives, and dismantle the plastic Christmas tree, stashing the amputated limbs under the house's expansive eaves. With a de-branched Christmas tree, Ellen's family had little choice but to send her and Kevin hunting for a worthy tree.

Venis tried her hands at a graphic arts and advertising shop, but she grew weary of the restrictions that can't be placed on an artist. With what she's doing now, she says, there's more room for her artistic spirit.

"Here, I can start working on a wreath and all of a sudden, it's like two or three o'clock in the morning," Venis says. "I'll look behind me and there will be a whole line of finished wreaths. They're definitely my niche, wreaths and garlands."

The Christmas season is a busy time for Ellen, whose designing and interior decorating skills are in high demand around the neighborhood when the goose starts to pack on the pounds. She estimates that last year she decorated six different trees, and this year she expects that number to climb.

Much of that business, Ellen predicts, will come from the series of open houses, where she will open up 103 and exhibit a Christmas tree and all the other Yuletide products she's been preparing, along with some festive autumn-themed items and a whole selection of Halloween treats she's arranged in the pantry.

The hope is that Ellen's artistry, which has also found a home in the First Expressions and Harbor Galleries, will spark her visitors' enthusiasm.

"This is what sells," she says, waving a hand to indicate the decorations. "The decorations have taken off to the point where last year I had to turn people down there was so much going on."

Those would-be customers will be taken care of this year, Ellen says, noting that she's often so busy decorating other people's houses for parties that she doesn't get to her own until it's almost too late.

"Somebody will show me a ribbon on a wreath or say, 'How do you get the place looking this way?' and I help people that way."

Another way he's helped people is by spending seven years decorating houses for the South Boston House Tour, an annual event that draws 2,000 people, with all the proceeds going to the Laboure Center.

"I'd say it's the best charity around because all the money just goes to the needy families of South Boston," Ellen says.

This month's exposition is her own venture, but the events on Oct. 26 and 27 will be held in conjunction with the Dorchester Art Association's annual Open Studios program, where trolleys lug visitors around to 50 Dorchester artists in their workspaces.

"I asked would I be the right fit, because I'm an artist and I do it as a business and they said it would be perfect, because this shows that artists can make a living."

Call it what you will, making things look good is Ellen Venis's game. That's why she and Larry, a trainer for the perennial powerhouse Boston University hockey team, have won awards from the MDC for their gardening prowess. She comes by it rightfully.

"My mother was always decorating and doing this and that," she recalls.

Around the corner, little Jessica, cute as a button, is carrying on tradition. There's a miniature Christmas tree there and she's hanging ornaments of little purses and bracelets on it. The tree looks great.

(Dorchester Open Studios will kick off with a reception on Friday, October 25 at the Great Hall in Codman Square, from 7:00 - 9:00 p.m. Dorchester residents are encouraged to participate by becoming members of the DAC, and by volunteering to help with the event. For more info, visit dorchesterartists.org, write info @dorchester artists.org or call Rosanne at 617-822-8205.)