new drawing:

Net 2
gouache, ink, collage and grass stain on paper
18″ x 24″
2011

Also on on website.

My summer studio transformation was featured on Design*Sponge yesterday. Thanks to people for their kind comments. Some common questions kept arising, so I thought I would address them here and post a few more photos for clarification.

I’m paraphrasing some of the questions and include responses below:

1) I see a bunch of art supplies in the “before” (read: ridiculously messy) image; where did they all go?

Well, this image was taken awhile ago. It was the only image I had that showed this much of the space from the doorway. I guess I was never happy enough with my studio want to photograph it. I may have hoarding tendencies, but most people who know me know that I am actually a pretty neat and organized person. I probably took this photo because of the remarkably messy state of the studio. As I recall I was framing and shipping a batch of drawings all while completing the mammoth task of my third year document (pre-tenure) document for school (I teach at a local university).

Anyway, here are some images of organization and storage solutions, i.e. where I put a lot of that stuff (the stuff I didn’t haul away, discard, take to the basement, etc.):

The shelves we built now hold my small framed work and much of my paper work and application supplies are vertically filed on the gray-ish blue shelf under the Ikea magnetic boards. The shoe organizer holds all of my office supplies and other random stuff like my glue gun and glue sticks (all with blue tape labels). That’s Wobbly Bob, one of our cats.

I used the closet to house cans of paint, a wall-mounted drawer system for organizing small hardware, and many labeled plastic crates, totes and drawers for various odds and ends, all categorized. I took off the closet door to have easier access to all of this stuff and to reveal more wall space for hanging work.

Also, that’s Ramona, and that’s her chair. I can’t take it out of the studio for fear that she would perish of sadness, as it’s her favorite place to be ever. I should mention that I have no personal need for this chair anymore since it’s too tall for my work surfaces. So in my highly efficient new studio, I have a chair just for a cat. At least it keeps her from walking all over my drawings.

2) How in the heck did you do all of that with a 500.00 budget (also where did you get your flat files)?

I put together a budget afterward to see what I had tallied. Here’s how it breaks down:

-Wood/doors–used for the table tops
(Home Depot):                                                115.

-Table legs and brackets x6 (”):                          60.

-Paint: (Benjamin Moore):                                  50.

-Flat file (craigslist):                                         160.

-Small file cabinet (local Re-use center):             10.

-Sandpaper, paint rollers, casters, etc.              100.

About:                                                            500.

We designed our own shelves and supports, but you can find some pretty great pre-made shelves and brackets out there. I first sanded and primed, then sanded and painted the worktable and shelves with Benjamin Moore’s GRAHAM Ceramic Satin Interior water borne enamel in Decorators White. Little foam paint rollers gave the surfaces a pretty smooth finish.

I looked all summer for a flat file on craigslist. I found one that was the right size for my small studio (in the bedroom of our ranch house) for a decent price.  It’s precisely: 40-3/4″ W  x  28-3/8″ D  x  15-3/8″ H. It had to be cleaned up a bit, but serves my purposes perfectly.

3) (From Lauren) Can I have your sweet orange chair when you’re done with it?

Yes. And I probably won’t be. I’ll will it to you though. It’s from the University of Michigan’s very excellent property disposition center–from their dental school I think. It cost about 15 dollars as I recall and badly needs to be reupholstered.

4) It looks too clean now; where did your mess go?

Naturally I took the photos at the completion of the project when everything was shiny and pretty. Now that I have had some time to live in it, there are little scuffs on the tables and my stuff is getting spread out everywhere again. When I want to reign it in between projects though, it’s that much easier now. Here are some images of my slightly more lived-in space with drawings in progress:

After the craziness of the start of school, having friends in town for labor day weekend and some traveling this weekend to drop off work for a show, I finally get to spend  Tuesday all day long in this space. I can’t wait. I promise to make it even messier.

I have work in the upcoming five-person exhibition Of Land and Water at the Noyes Cultural Arts Center in Evanston, Illinois.

Here’s the front and back of the postcard with the pertinent info:

**update**

This studio transformation was recently featured on Design*Sponge. I wrote a follow-up post answering some of the questions that arose in the comments and also posted a few more images here.

With the help of Mark, I spent the entire last month in major house studio overhaul mode. I had five year’s worth of paperstuffs, random art supplies and countless odds and ends to sort and either discard or organize. It all started with my desire for a flat file, since all of my flatwork and papers were sloppily vertically stored against the wall behind a closet door.

The organization project evolved into ditching my drafting table and our old kitchen table I was using as a desk in favor of clean, white tables easily made out of doors and painted white. Mark built me wall shelves for storing small, framed work and we got them installed yesterday. Now the studio feels so much better, I want to be in here all the time. Just to show you how far it’s come, at one point, it had devolved into this:

Here are some overview shots of the new setup:

…and some detail shots:

Now to start making a mess again.

Net 1
ink, gouache, blue tape and collage on paper
18″ x 24″
2005 and 2011

Land Blindness (for R. Smithson)
ink, gouache, salt, gold leaf and correction tape on paper (not pictured: accompanying rock from the site of Spiral Jetty)
drawing 30″ x 22″, installation dimensions variable
2011

I was very affected by our sojourn to the Spiral Jetty on our recent southwest road trip. As much as I was taken with the life and death of Amelia Earhart, last year’s oil spill, the Icelandic volcanic eruption, and responded to these events in my recent  work, I am currently working on a drawing in that loosely engages Spiral Jetty and the life and untimely death of Robert Smithson. The book Mirror-Travels | Robert Smithson and History has been informative, imparting the significance of the building site of the monumental earth work: close to the site of the driving of the Golden Spike, where the continent was joined via railroad.  Also today’s Daily Serving article about the potential fate of the piece is quite timely, yet unsettling.

Here are some images of sketchbook collages I made on the trip from the vast amount of magazines we took with us for the long car rides.

So it is happily between the drawing and painting studio that I will spend the rest of the summer, amidst gardening, sun tea making, gathering with friends and planning a large international exhibition for the fall (this time with my curatorial hat on). As I see it, that’s a pretty good place to be.

With an eminent trip to Santa Fe, New Mexico to attend the wedding of friends Jason and Allison, Mark and I were prompted to embark upon a recent three-week road trip of the southwest U.S.  Along the way, we saw great friends, much art, amazing landscapes and visited cities we’d never before seen.  And there was food.  Lots of good food.  Here are some pictorial highlights from the trip.

Since school ended in April, I’ve been able to spend a lot of time in the studio. I have the help of a couple of students, one who made a big batch of stretchers for me, another who is doing all of the stretching and gessoing. It’s great to have so much help, which frees me up to work on some new paintings, all in progress. I’m working with images from Iceland and algae flows, and playing around with volcanic ash, mica and silver leaf.

Also I have the modest beginnings of a new web-based project: http://deltiophile.tumblr.com/
I’m using it as a place to post the postcards I collected while in Iceland, some collages, pages from my sketchbook and other visual sources for my work.

Map of the Becoming, archival inkjet print collage; reconfigurable, approximately 28″ x 11″, 2011

On Saturday night a group of area artists gathered at Gabe and Jennifer Hillebrand‘s home for a sort-of salon-style opening of a one-night show called Diverge, curated by Gabe.  The point was to submit something that is a divergence from our customary practice.

Thanks to Gabe and Jen for hosting!