welcome to the 209th episode of A View From the Easel, a series in which artists reflect on their workspace. Want to participate? Discover our submission guidelines and share a bit of your studio with us! All mediums and workspaces are welcome.
My studio doubles as my own personal gallery. Everything is very neat. I often collaborate with fashion brands here in New York; so i like that the space is prepared for studio visits, interviews and photo shoots of me and my work. I prefer to start each day de-cluttered and not frustrated with yesterday’s mess, literally.
As a BIPOC Woman artist, visibility is the foundation of my paintings. This is another reason why I prefer my paintings to be visible and hung high on the walls. When someone walks past or enters my studio, I want them to see that every subject of my work is visible, so the message of my work is clearly communicated. Open studios are the best. I try to create the space I needed to grow up studying fine arts. I haven’t had the opportunity to visit or read about many BIPOC artists and women responsible for their own art spaces. Times are changing, now I can be part of that change.
How happy it was to open the curtains and face this glorious sunny day shining down on Potrero Hill in San Francisco. It’s a rainy winter in California. I moved to this studio from a windowless studio inside the same building because besides needing a window for ventilation, I also needed to be connected to the outdoors.
What you’re looking at is: in the middle, my chart is split in two: the oils and a color palette on the left side of the chart, and the “clean” area on the right side of the chart, although they usually blend together . The left wall hangs the works in progress. On the right wall, paintings that will soon be in progress as well. Between the table and the wall, a large painting made up of 10 canvases covered with old sheets to protect it from dust. My chair does what I was before I got up: sunbathing, sometimes a luxury in this foggy city. Behind me, more leaf-covered artwork, shelves with books and supplies (the tidiest part of the studio), a ladder, and the door.
Now back to work, before I have to pick up my baby from daycare.
This place where an artist spends so much time can be quite remarkable or quite humble. Mine is somewhere in between. It’s a recent construction in my garage, a space probably intended for golf carts. It has high ceilings so I could elevate large pieces on a “Classic Santa Fe II” easel. It costs nothing so I don’t spend my profits in the studio.
Installed on the ground, thick padded tiles [great for standing work]. In the corner are flat folders where I put my tubes of paint on a pulled drawer. You can see three chairs, one is a western saddle. I used to ride horses as a kid and can recommend this type of seat for work. Physical comfort is paramount for acute concentration and changing seats several times per session really helps. Not pictured, my desktop and my Mac. I listen to music, news and podcasts, and more recently binge on Lex Fridman. He and his guests help us become aware of the vast universe we all share.
Rona ContiBelmont, Mass.
Pictured is my Japanese calligraphy studio. As an artist who started working in the mid-1960s, fresh out of college after a year studying painting in Paris, non-representation or abstraction was my starting point and inspiration. exploration. It was a heady time for abstract art, and although my influences sometimes came from nature, devoid of people, the vocabulary of my paintings was color in all its glorious forms.
My series of acrylic stripe paintings, based on a process of letting the paint drip onto the raw canvas and then layering, building the overall image slowly and steadily until the whole is created, referred to calligraphy or calligraphic strokes, as one art critic mentioned in the 1980s at the time. After more than 50 years as an artist, it now seems like a real vision of the future.
Ever since I was in college, I dreamed of going to Japan to study calligraphy. Thirty-five years later, in 1999, I started my calligraphy studies with Mieko Kobayashi Sensei from Gunma, Japan. I split my time between Boston and Japan, living there for four years in segments. It was a life-changing process that continues to this day.
This is my main work table with several small projects in progress. A sculptor who also needs to draw and make prints, I work with many different mediums: clay, wax, papier-mâché, wire, found objects and household waste. My main project now involves a papier-mache head built on a chicken wire and detritus frame. I am sewing and felting many components of this piece including felting and stuffing lint and yarn cotton. Used aluminum foil is a valuable resource because it is light and malleable. If I’m working on multiple projects at once, I can stay in the studio longer without getting restless.
To decompress I often make miniature rooms. These also help me think about interior spaces and how to stage my work. A miniature workshop is barely visible. It has better light than my real studio and also a couch, so I can inhabit it in my imagination when I need to relax.
What is not visible in the photo is the music, a necessary part of my practice. Right now I’m listening to Cream’s »wheels of fire.”
My studio was the original cottage on my property in Taghkanic, New York. My first project was to keep it upright and able to function as my workspace rather than the crumbling building with four small rooms. It was a big project that included lots of demos, a new roof and floor, and skylights. I use the back wall, visible here, as the main wall to watch work in progress or just finished. But I work horizontally on work tables. The mounted deer was found at auction for my drawing students at FIT, but is now home! Much of my earlier work since moving to Taghkanic used pieces of old wood that came out of that building and I continue to work with wood and on wood panels but no longer those that have the built in story of my first studio in the country.
