January 2024 - Studio Tour

My studio is in my apartment, making them one in the same. In the front hallway, there is a built-in cabinet that stands about six feet tall. It’s painted thickly with contractor’s paint to match the walls making the metal clasps unable to keep the doors locked shut. On the outside of the cabinet, I hang my laundry cart and a towel for drying off my dog when it rains. The whale and the flamingo towels are in rotation, living their second life after hanging on clotheslines after beach days on the Cape. Inside the cabinet to the left is for audio visual, mostly camera equipment, lights and extension cords. On the right are several containers of supplies - gouache box, acrylics, inks and ink tools, caran d’ache, markers, the oldest art bin I’ve ever owned, a box full of mechanical pencils that I still haven’t gifted away and buckets of gesso and matte medium. The top of the cabinet used to be stacked to the ceiling with other boxes and has since been whittled down to empty space. Through the front hallway, past the bikes and cabinet, sits a space about eight feet square. I call it the front room. It is the place where all of the other areas of the apartment come together. It is essentially a foyer with a deeply set storage closet.

After the summer when I threw out six bags of bubble wrap, a dozen storage tubs and a handful of flattened cardboard, I can finally use the storage closet to store supplies and artwork. It holds my old paintings and paintings made by other people, raw stretched canvases, household tools, empty frames, wall painting supplies, and a few storage bins with extra clothes, more audio visuals like a spare laptop, polaroid and old digital cameras, a bin filled with sewing supplies, another filled with nostalgia from childhood through now, like birthday cards, photographs, the mask I made of my face when I was 18. Also in the closet is a director's chair, with red canvas back and seat, in which I sat for many hours, years ago, in conversation with one of my favorite people. The second director’s chair is also in the front room and I use it everyday to hold my day bag and junk mail, until it gets tossed or shredded. The other chair in the front room is lower to the ground, wood, cushioned and wheeled, about two and a half feet round with an arched arm and backrest in one. It is upholstered with an olive green vinyl and was gifted to me from my stepdad who had it for several decades before it became mine. The olive chair sits in front of a built-in arched shelf, typical of the pre-war time when the apartment was built. The shelf holds dog gear as well as N-95 masks (just in case), a dried pomegranate, a photo of a palm-sized pillow that I gave to a friend that he took to a bullfight in Spain, and a plaque that displays the optimist’s creed which I was awarded in High School for some good deed I’d done. My bookshelf is in the front room, on what began as a shoe rack, still bamboo and starting to bow. It’s a collection of art books, thick books, school books and books I’ve read or mean to read, someday when I stop scrolling so much. Small collections of Joan Didion and Murakami. 

Besides what is on the wall, the only other thing in the front room is one of three large metal baker’s racks - the one I use to store paper and more supplies. After I gave my flat file to a printmaker neighbor, I started to store the large paper on the rack; a mix of already made, halfway made, and yet-to-be made drawings. The rack also holds larger objects, oil paints and brushes, the oil paint box that belonged to my gone-too-soon poet friend Nathalie, a sewing machine I’ve had for years and barely use, bins with way old sketchbooks and journals, and several ready-to-go stretched canvases, most of them made in Los Angeles the summer I borrowed a friend’s backyard and chop saw in exchange for watching their cat. On the very top of the rack are a pair of old drawings -  ink drawings of afghans on four by six foot paper that have been crumpled loosely into wastebasket balls. 

On the side of the front room that sits opposite the front hallway, is the kitchen. It’s a sixth floor kitchen with great light and a tree out the window that reminds me what season I’m in. Most of my plants are there and hang above a small drawing desk that doubles as a computer desk or place to eat meals. There’s another baker's rack in the kitchen, a hand-me-down from Julie’s studio. On it is a mix of kitchen and art supplies, paintings as far back as some of my first, le creusets, a fancy blender which I bought for myself when I turned 40, fabric alice napkins, cutting boards, cleaning cloths, a few more plants and a mirror between the shelves hanging from the wall that almost makes the room feel wider. At one point I built a plastic wall to separate the window nook from the stove area so that I can work on oil painting. The heat was impossible and the whole thing unnecessary. So, I took it down. On the top of the baker's rack is a red wagon called “The Original” that I found brand new and abandoned on a curb in Tribeca and loved it so much I took it home. The wagon holds plants that cascade down the rack and when they are trimmed, grow back easily. A few more items on the wall in the kitchen; like the photo of “Dori’s Cafe” that my parents photographed in Arizona and had printed when I was twelve, a metal grocery list with movable tabs, written in French, a gift from Joigny, and a salmon shaped mold for New York Times mousse.

The main room, off the side of the front room, is where both my studio area and living space coexist. After two years of concerted effort toward clearing space and letting go, I have tried to stay careful with what I add back in. A new bed frame, mattress and couch and a new rug were all investments made for well-being as much as they were to replace what was ravaged by puppy training. I sometimes wonder if I made the wrong choice because they take up studio space, much more than if I had gotten a day bed and skipped the couch. But, ultimately I think I chose wisely for this moment. If another moment comes when I need more space, I will adjust. It is a similar ethos to what directs me when making my work - make moves that make sense in the moment with the flexibility to pivot if the situation calls for something else. 

Lately, I’ve been making drawings at my desk, which is actually a six foot panel that I originally made with the intention of using it for a life sized full body self portrait. It now stretches across two small red metal cabinets that hold various art supplies and tools. The drawers have a sense of organization that ranges from junk drawers to drawers filled with paper clips organized by size in repurposed jam jars. There’s a drawer filled with staples, another with tape, another with utensils that cut. Then there’s the drawer that holds a kaleidoscope I bought on a school field trip as a kid, a small collection of keychains that feature the twin towers, other odds and ends. Though I sometimes draw against the wall, and years ago, cross-legged on the ground, the tabletop is where I am today. I sit at the table on a bench which my dog has recently learned to climb to get a better angle for investigation. When I sit there, both windows are to my left, the bed to my right, and my neighbor on the other side of the wall in front of me. Behind me is the couch that’s long enough for a nap or a stretched out phone call with a friend. 

Between the windows, I reassembled a smaller version of the baker’s racks. I used to have six of them but I gave the other five to my building’s super during a clearing session earlier last year. I reluctantly put the sixth back together when I decided to store my small paper in a place where I could see it all, and it proved to be another wise choice. Rather than have all the paper stuffed into a bin, it is now sorted on a six shelf rack. Lined paper, graph paper, perforated and not, looseleaf, watercolor, bristol, tracing, mylar, handmade, colored, toned, faded, thick and thin, and a stack of the cardboard backings of several dismantled sketchbooks. Like an art store inside my own studio. There’s a stack of paper that used to live in sketchbooks, before I painstakingly cut off the wire that bound them so that they’d be free from the book with the trim still intact. It was a satisfying move that seemed a bit strange but totally right while I was making it. I haven’t yet “used” the paper for anything but I like that it exists.

There’s loose leaf paper I resurrected from a binder I found in a box of nostalgia from a class I took in 3rd grade. It has that manilla graininess that takes well to colored pencils and heavy graphite or light handed ball point pen. There is watercolor paper that’s pristine as well as some that’s been scuffed and smudged or partially used. 

And finally, there are a handful of notebooks I bought in France because the grids in Europe are so extra compared to the grids in the States. I’ve had a romantic affinity for them since thirty years ago when my cousin moved to France and wrote letters to us on the same kind of paper. Some of the notebooks have drawings inside of repetitive patterns that play with the grid. Some of the notebooks are waiting.