I have two studios. The upstairs one is my painting studio, the basement one is my assemblage studio (aka junk shop). We moved into our new house (it’s an old house, 1926 era, but new to us) about 16 months ago, which allowed me to close down my one-bedroom house studio and bring everything home. Even with two studios in our new house, it wasn’t easy to consolidate everything from an entire house and put it into two spaces.
In December of 2012 I packed, sorted, boxed, donated, and sold all sorts of studio items. The former studio was filled to the brim – every room was mine to fill as I pleased: kitchen, living room, bedroom, bathroom, laundry room, and a tacked on shed (and the back yard, too). It was a herculean task and I couldn’t have done it without the help of friends.
Then what was boxed, needed to be put away.
It was overwhelming, but two friends came to the rescue. Sam helped moved all the boxes and Tory helped put it away.
I’m a pretty organized person, so I put most of the assemblage bits in the basement, but I also put a lot of it upstairs in my painting studio. Over the past year I’ve worked on my Curious Elements and Funky Junkyard Birds in the basement, but I was constantly running upstairs to my painting studio to comb through the bits I had put up there. And then when I was painting in the upstairs studio, I was beginning to feel claustrophobic with all the junk surrounding me.Two weeks ago I realized it was time to reorganize and move the last of the little bits to the basement and clear out some of the clutter (but not the shelves that Tory lovingly filled with my fun treasures).
After a full day of moving stuff out of my painting studio, this is how it looked:
But, I had made a huge mess in the basement that had to wait until this week to remedy.
It took two days to get the basement space reorganized and tidied up. But it was worth it.
I love studio shots, so here are a few close-ups from the basement.
Now I need to go get to work.
Dennis Galloway is a world renowned photographer who happened to visit the art exhibit, Ricochet, that Cynthia and I had up during January and February, in downtown Salem. Dennis liked our art and sent both of us an e-mail asking if we would be interested in having him create a panoramic studio shot of our studies. He sent some photos of a series of studios and artists he photographed in Eugene, Oregon, for an exhibit, and his work was stunning. Both of us said yes.
