For years my studio was a closet, which severely limited what I could sculpt. Fortunately, in 1987, I found an ad in a local newspaper for a two-bedroom house listed for sale for $1 to anyone who could remove the one story building from a property on Main Street. I decided it could be a workable studio, so I found a building mover, and he trucked the house to my land. It was the best dollar I ever spent. For more than twenty five years, I've used one room as my showroom/gallery, one room as the casting room and the former living/dining room as my main work area, filled with sculpture stands, a kiln, drying racks, shelves and lots of sculptures. A set of double doors opens onto a deck, so that trucks with heavy deliveries can back up right to the doors and unload heavy deliveries like, for example, a ton of clay.
Since I work both from my imagination and from life, I need privacy and enough room to pose a model. I need space to work simultaneously on both large and small sculptures; space for fragile terracotta sculptures in all stages of drying, away from children and animals. My materials are messy and need separate spaces: clay, plaster, epoxy and fiberglass don’t mix well. Having adequate studio space has meant that I could accept sculpture commissions that would otherwise have been out of my reach. My studio has also been a refuge in hard times. Knowing I have an oasis of calm and quiet waiting for me has saved my sanity.
From the beginning, my studio was at the outer limit of what I could afford. Years ago, if I'd had the money, I would have installed a well and septic field, but I never could afford to do that. My version of "running water" in my studio is running for the bathroom in the house. When I'm casting, I haul buckets of water from the house, which I think of as good upper body strengthening exercise. But if there had been a well and septic field, I would certainly have rented it out as the two bedroom house that it is, rather than use it as a studio, especially during the single parent years when I was painfully low on money. Actually, having no indoor plumbing turned out to be a blessing in disguise that enabled me to keep it as a studio.
This is the year I'm going to get the furnace up and running, not to mention hooked up to the propane tank, so I can work later in the fall when the weather turns cool. Repairs to the studio are always kind of a crunch. Right now it's extremely crunchy as I'm wondering how I'm going to get the siding replaced. Brilliant ideas welcome!
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| Main work area; kiln to the right; sturdy easel for relief sculpture to the left |
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| Casting room; buckets for hauling water and mixing plaster |
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