Taking a break from socializing at my Cyan Studio artspace, Hong Kong 2008

Wanted – Artists Studio: A Clean, Well-Lit Place for Art

Making art is a messy business – even messier than selling it these days in an art market turned upside down. While some art-processes are relatively clean – say, pencil drawing – most aren’t something you’d want to do in your living room. I was reminded of this after looking at the ruined polyester carpet in ours after I made batch of cyanotype photos at home. This just after we’d moved to Sydney, and my need to test negatives outweighed what others call common sense.

Last week I returned to Sydney, with a fistful of art projects to complete before going to Asia for more work next year.  I’ve been searching on Gumtree and speaking with artists I’ve met here, and should nail down a short-term studio soon.  Over the past 15 years I’ve made art in all sorts of spaces, and have learned a lot about what I need when looking for a studio.

Ventilation:

During university I worked evenings 30 hours/week, but devoted daytime to painting at our campus studios. Any empty classroom in the art building was fair game. Shared turpentine trays spewed fumes in the air as sparrows flitted through rafters overhead. Once I began to explore  encaustic painting for a grant program, my wax fumes added to the toxic mix.

Heat:

For two years I shared an unheated/uncooled warehouse space in Minneapolis with other artists: painters, furniture designers, sculptors. We built a gallery surrounded by our studios. The raw space had charm, but it was hard to paint while shivering.

Perspective:

In Korea and New York I squeezed my life and art studio into tiny apartments, and the work I made was terrible: precious and small, with a vision to match. The main problem? Not enough space to get a good look at the work I was making.

Light:

When I lived in Cambodia and made the Bokor in Blue series, I rented a house and had everything an artist could want, especially bright Cambodian sunlight. And the odd uninvited guest: scorpions, mostly.

Guests of all ages & sizes showed up at Cyan Studio openings

Height:

Shortly after I moved to Hong Kong I rented a separate apartment with rooftop next to the sea, and called it The Cyan Studio. Once a month I opened up the studio and featured local artists from the island where I lived. While it was a great way to meet many creative neighbors, the ceilings were low while the one-bedroom layout was small, as was the work I made there. Small size – and scope – is a common criticism of much of the work made in Hong Kong; some of this is dictated by the spaces available to most artists.

Easy-to-clean floors:

During the transition from HK to Sydney, I had a home-based studio for awhile. This was fine as the illustrations I was finishing were small, and cyanotype spills were easy to clean up from our tile floor.

My plan for summertime in Sydney: make messy blue cyanotypes in a separate studio during the day, and write my book/work on the tidier, large-scale Calendar Girls in my home studio at night. No time for afternoons at the beach this year, there’s too much work to be done.

Artwork ,  Contact Me ,  Connect on Twitter ,   Facebook ,  Subscribe to my blog [RSS Feed]

Some photos from a quiet island.

Deserted beaches during the slow season are a great way to experience the pace of island life. Koh Mak’s flat horizon bristles with palm and rubber trees, and down its sealed roads drive its quirky inhabitants. Some live there all year; most split their lives between Koh Mak and elsewhere. Almost none were born there.

The center of the island is covered in rubber plantations, owned by the “big three” families who were given the island by the King a century ago to keep it from the colonial claws of the French. At night you can sometimes see the latex tappers, who wear mosquito coils on their hats and lights on their foreheads.

I worked in three-hour blocks, and every day was different. Some days I transcribed notes from interviews in Laos and Vietnam; on others I sketched from memory and photo references, or finished the last reference books from White Lotus.

Off-season beaches get half the sun and are half the price of the tourist peak from November-March. My $5 bungalow was shaken by plenty of storms during the first week. Rain dripped through the thatched roof. Sand flew through slats of coconut wood into my mosquito net. But I just pulled my blanket tighter and slept through it.

Rainy days are the best kind of weather to get the work done. And that’s why I was there in the first place: for a real working holiday.