View of my studio, looking north
Friend and artist Pam Farrell has invited artists to do a show and tell on her blog. Calling her project Interactive Studio Blog Post–ISBP–Pam now has nearly 10 artists who have participated. Their postings typically feature a work or body of work and an image of their studio.
Pam included some salient quotes from James Elkins about studios and workspaces:
In “What Painting Is”, James Elkins includes a chapter entitled “The Studio as a Kind of Psychosis”.
Working in a studio means leaving the clean world of normal life and moving into a shadowy domain where everything bears the marks of the singular obsession.
Elkins talks about the artists’ studio in terms of the alchemy of art making:
Alchemy is the best model for this plague of paint, for the self-imprisonment of the studio and for the allure of insanity.
For those of you interested in behind-the-scenes art making, it is definitely worth a visit. And for anyone who is a maker who would like to open their own kimono a bit, you can contact Pam directly.
Your studio looks very much like the one in my recurrent dreams, during my painting years, which are starting to tug at me again. I have interviewed many visual artists and one theme that came up a lot was one’s studio as one’s artistic self, a container that transforms the person into an artist, a kind of extension of self. I may not be explaining it well after all these years, but especially women who had mothering roles felt that they had a parent identity in the house and their artist identity was kept in the studio. Does that make sense?
QS, of course. Part of what I have found compelling in Pam’s project has been these very issues. I can’t begin to describe how primal my connection is to the place of making. Do writers feel this way about a desk, an area designated? I share an intimacy with the space that is almost unworldly. I’m flattered that my space correlates to something in your dreams.
I think some writers do, the whole Room of One’s own, but I believe for most writers it’s portable. I think it’s because art is a concrete object in space, so the space that contains it matters. Writing is abstract ideas floating in the brain. The brain is portable.
I just wanted to comment that your studio is so serene. I love the glass on the windowsill and the found objects from nature.
Thanks ybonesy. It does have a serene quality to it and one that I find I need when I am working.