interactive studio blog project installment no. 17: kate beck

I have tremendous respect for Kate and her work. I've learned much from her wonderful blog and how she speaks about her process.

Untitled Graphite on Arches Printmaking Paper
42 x 72, 2009 © Kate Beck 2009

My words:

We moved into a new house last year and I consequently moved my studio, as well. I now live and work “… in a field, on a beach, on a pile of rocks in the Atlantic...”. We’re building it out, so it’s a challenge to be working in the same space I’m renovating, but it's coming along. All together, it is about 950 sq. ft., the entire bottom level of the house, which opens up into the field, looking out to sea. Quiet, and nice. The largest space is for painting, and I have a room for drawing – the clean room – and another for storage. The light is mostly artificial but the studio faces south and I do get natural light for drawing, especially. I’ve never had a studio in my living space before but it is working out well.

My drawings and paintings are created as an intuitive response to materials placed within a given space: graphite on paper, paint on substrate, objects within a room. I consider them as objects, concrete elements of structure. I believe white to be the most inherently beautiful color as it carries with it the potential to simultaneously expose and negate space. I believe black to be the most innately powerful color as it is defined by the presence of light as well as by the absence of light.

The mind’s natural inclination is to identify a problem and work it out, a process of thinking and re-thinking. My aesthetic is founded in formal principles and methodologies of drawing, which I consider the most visual equivalent to thought.

I named my house and my studio White Spot.

Kate Beck

isbp installment no. 16: diane mcgregor

Diane McGregor gives us a look at her New Mexico studio and work. I am especially impressed that Diane's studio looks this clean even when she's working in it. Oh yeah, and I really like her work. 

Diane writes:

Attached in a photo of a corner of my studio with some finished paintings on the walls and one in progress on the easel. This is pretty much how my studio looks all the time -- I didn't clean it up or anything. I'm a fairly tidy painter. I have fantastic light (although not northern light), from south, east and west windows. This studio is the largest room in my house, what would have been the master bedroom, but it is quickly getting very cramped and I'm considering renting a studio in town, if I can stand the commute. (I live outside of Santa Fe in a little farming village, and it's about a half-hour drive into town).

Rising   2009

oil on canvas    40x40 

isbp installment no. 15: lisa pressman

Lisa Pressman, who lives and works in West Orange, NJ,  and I met--once, for about 5 minutes--at the opening reception for Material Color at the Hunterdon Art Museum last October, but we've kept in touch via the magic of the web. I love her thoughts about her studio to the work. Not gibberish at all, Lisa!

Lisa writes:

I actually took this photo a while ago as I was finishing up some work; I wasn't happy with it (the studio looked so clean or composed). But looking at it now I was struck by how the image begins to "read" like one of my paintings. 

In the foreground you have the red heat gun shape with the graphic red line of the wire that then leads to the touches of red on the table in the mid ground and then to the fire extinguisher red and then to the touch of the red in that canvas in the way back. and so on and so forth- with colors, shapes, lines, stops and starts of bundles of energy (the brushes, the scrambled papers,the repeating rectangles, etc.). The eye meanders through to read the story.

I may be speaking gibberish with only my first cup of coffee, but seems so clear to me this morning: the studio is the bridge from the unconscious and conscious to the work.

I Know That 1 & 2   2009    encaustic on panel     each 24 x 24 

Interactive Studio Blog Project Installment No. 14: Marco Paltrinieri

Marco Paltrinieri lives in London, but is native to Italy. When he's not working on his psychology dissertation, Marco is focused on photography, and just had an exhibit in Italy.

Marco writes:

I'm a photographer. Or even better, I'm a psychologist who loves to play with photography. 

In the last two years I have lived in 3 different flat so I've got nothing more than a sort of "portable" studio. All I need are my laptop and my notebooks, a few drawings to hang up on the wall and a small collection of found objects. Leaves, stones, shells, each object represents an exact moment in time, a personal and intimate memory that I decided to hide from the camera's eye...

Untitled  C Print 

from the series "Borders and Gates of 66 Poplar Court"

...Gerhard Richter says that images are "unachievable" and are to be doubted. I do agree. That's why I love photography. It gives me the opportunity to explore the space existing between reality and the mind, between certainty and confusion. A space where the meaning of reality is constantly challenged, negotiated and redefined.

A TECH REQUEST

Greetings:

I have recently switched from pc to mac, and I'm experiencing a bit of a learning curve when it comes to blogging, particularly uploading photos to the blog. I've done a bit of looking around to see what others recommend for photos/images. Many mention Ecto, but I've not been able to download it successfully. So...I'm asking readers to comment on solutions that work for you when it comes to uploading photos and images onto your Blogger blog. Thanks in advance!

ISBP Installment No. 13: Joanne Mattera

I'll consider this post lucky number 13. With Joanne Mattera's images and statement, it feels like this little project has come full circle. Joanne's visit to my studio prompted me to put my thoughts about the ISBP into words. (She was the one walking around snapping pix of my studio while I was thinking what a mess it was.)

Joanne writes:

I shot this picture of my studio, a former auto repair shop, in 2004. I had just finished two large paintings—capstones for two solo shows that would take place shortly—and, still in high gear, prepared a number of smaller panels for the next body of work. As is my wont, after a period of intense activity leading up to a show, I crash for a few days and then clean up the studio. There’s something cathartic about the process. (I wrote about that interim in a post called Post-Partum Abstraction.)

So you’re seeing the space in an unnaturally pristine way. It’s the physical embodiment of a Zen moment. When I’m sitting in this ordered, empty space, I can see the next body of work. It’s not a process I can describe; I just need to start with a clean slate.

You’ll notice that the brushes are not clean, however. I work primarily in encaustic. Wax paint never polymerizes, so when it’s heated, it’s workable again. I can melt off what’s there, wipe the brush clean, and dip it into the new palette—though I keep the brushes within color families. I have hundreds more brushes now, but they all look like this.

I’m not a north light purist. I’m perfectly happy to work with incandescent illumination, but I do like the diffused southern light that comes through the translucent overheads I had installed. I call them my “Gagosian doors.” (They are the only thing Larry and I have in common.)

The studio is in Massachusetts, just north of Boston. I had no intention of relocating my studio from New York, but on a whim while visiting the area, I looked at this building with its open space on the ground floor and a sky lit loft upstairs and a price that was actually affordable. I heard my mouth make an offer. The universe had quite literally delivered me to the doorstep. I also live in New York. It’s a long “commute,” but I do it in chunks, an almost perfect balance of life in the studio and life outside it.

Vicolo 52 2008
encaustic on panel 36 x 36 inches

Interactive Studio Blog Project Installment No. 12: Nancy Natale

This installation of the ISBP brings us to Nancy Natale's studio and work. She provides us with images of her old studio and bright spanking new studio, as well as one of her encaustic pieces. Nancy has recently launched a blog, Art In the Studio where you can see more pics of her studio and work.

Nancy writes:

My studio is in a big old mill building (formerly a factory for Stanley Home Products) in Easthampton, Mass., in the western side of the state near Northampton and Amherst, almost to the Berkshires. The photo is a shot of the way it looks while I'm working - not neat.

The Maze (below) is a 20 x 32 joined diptych of encaustic and embedded materials on top of sanded acrylic paintings on paper mounted on wooden panels.