Barbara Wauchope, Lee, New Hampshire
This is my studio — an actual loft, about 8 feet x 8 feet, overlooking my living room. It’s not much space, but since I don’t do very large pieces, I manage. I’m a multi-media painter so have shelves for books and papers and jars of media, drawers for tools and paints and pencils. I use a clothesline to hang photos, sketches, and little canvases for testing out textures. I lean canvases, boards and frames along the walls, stack pads under a table, pile boxes of molds and collected objects for inclusion in my paintings on the bookshelf, leaving just one small table for ruminating on my next pieces. Then I cram travel mementos on whatever spaces are left. The only things I miss are a sink — but I use one in a nearby bathroom — and my computer, which I use for photos, in my bedroom. My cat sleeps on the chair when he can — it’s the warmest place in the house. And the north-facing windows look into trees, especially pleasant when it snows. But as crowded as it is, my studio gives me a place to focus, to rein in my ideas, which otherwise would sprawl uncontrollably all over the house.
Stephen Niccolls, Kingston, New York
My studio walls are often crowded with paintings in various stages of completion, as shown here. The studio is a former bedroom in my home. It is not very large. I often spend time looking at and thinking about the range of visual ideas that have become manifest in the group of paintings that happen to be on the wall at any given moment. It becomes possible to consider the next step in the development of these visual ideas by considering what I’ve done in the recent past. I assembled this grouping while thinking about the diversity of visual decisions that I have made in the last year or so. These decisions are like proposals, in that they postulate forms or arrangements that are [or could be] in tune with my fascination with certain attributes of the visual world. For instance, I love looking at and thinking about nature, geology, and antique or ancient artifacts. These things all have an organic quality, difficult to define precisely, that inspires my work.
Alberto Hamonet, Davis, California
Behind us, facing the pantings is an enormous wall of windows, through that window I can see a grouping of Giant Sequoia Redwood trees. I’ve had a glorified closet, a kitchen, and several bedrooms as studios; all stepping stones to get me here. With space comes transformation in scale and perspective, embracing the unique aspects of a studio can greatly influence the trajectory of the work. For reference, that ladder is 15 feet tall. Perhaps my next studio will be tiny, in which case I will enjoy making tiny work.
Rachel Burgess, New York City, New York
I live in New York City and work at the Lower East Side Printshop, a professional printmaking studio in Manhattan. On most days I arrive early in the morning, eat breakfast, mix my colors while listening to a podcast and the sounds of Eighth Avenue, and start painting. I work in monotype — a form of printmaking that yields a single, irreproducible image. My background is in illustration, and I love monotype because it straddles the line between printmaking/commercial art and more traditional “fine” art. Once I’m done painting, I lay a piece of paper on top of my image and run the whole thing through a printing press, creating a unique print. Each monotype is a bit like a performance: I make the piece in one sitting, and there’s no way to fix a mistake, so it really requires being in the zone. Working at a communal studio allows me to focus without feeling alone or isolated — it’s the best of both worlds.
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