Hello everyone! I can hardly believe it’s already April but here we are. I’ve only been writing here since late December- that’s three months, and already we have more than doubled readership! Thank you for reading, commenting, and sharing this newsletter—it means so much and helps grow Practice and Curiosity into a supportive and inspirational space for all of us! Each month I try to have a focus, or theme, and this month I’m going to focus on two foundations—space and time. They are some of the raw materials with which we form our practice (along with, I would argue, attention and willingness, which are less quantifiable and often developed over time, like muscles). Today I’m writing about literal and metaphorical space: the spaces we work in and the space we “take up” as artists in our life and the world.
One of my favorite things to do each year is attend our local Open Studios event. In San Francisco, this unfolds across multiple weekends as artists across the city open their creative doors to the public. Of course I love seeing the artwork and talking to people, but I have to admit that the thing I enjoy most is simply being in other artist’s studios. My favorites are the ones that are less cleaned up for the event, where I can still sense the work being made and see the threads of how that particular artist is inspired and makes their work. Artist studios are cultivated spaces, vital to our work. Setting aside space for creative work is an act of potent intention, a declaration of the value of what we do. It doesn’t have to be big, and it doesn’t have to be fancy, but it should suit where we are in our practice, the kind of work we want to make, and fit the rhythm of our life. Studios can look all sorts of different ways. For example, here is a list of all the studios I’ve had over the last thirty+ years, in chronological order:
My sketchbook
Many shared studios at my college and university
The corner of my apartment with an easel and a tarp over the carpet
A large live-work studio in a converted paint factory that I could not afford
A 6x6 foot space cleared out of the moving boxes in my in-law’s garage
A small live-work space that I could afford
A dilapidated barn with a dirt floor
A corner of another artist’s garage studio
A bedroom in our house (we slept in the living room to make space for painting)
A live-work studio that regularly featured the sounds of gunshots at night
No studio
The floor of my neighbor’s studio when I could trade babysitting with a friend
Basement space in our home
A table in my garage
An extra room in an office building where my husband worked
A sweet 10x16’ studio I contracted a friend to build in my backyard
An additional space I carved out in our garage when my work outgrew that little studio
A spacious studio in a grammar-school-turned-art-center that had terrific light
A small studio on the third floor of an artist building in San Francisco
Part of a room and patio in our temporary high-desert home
A spare bedroom in a big rambling house in the woods
And my current studio in a commercial building in San Francisco
That’s a lot of studios! And it’s also a wide sample of what constitutes a studio. What I call my “studio” has flexed to fit my life, work, and means. Some of them worked out and others didn’t. The barn I rented was huge and really cheap, but working there was cold and muddy and dark. It didn’t last long. When my children were small, I preferred spaces that were in my home, where I could seamlessly move back and forth between mother/partner/artist roles. When my children were older I benefited from having more separation between my work life and the laundry, so I rented a studio.
We often need to use less-than-ideal or makeshift spaces; when we are first starting out we secure whatever space we can and go from there. When I was a student, I didn’t have a studio of my own, so my sketchbook became my portable personal workspace. People make art at their kitchen tables and on their computers, in their garages and sheds, at residencies, and in communal studios. A camera or a notebook might be the only “space” an artist has access to or needs. I made my favorite painting I’ve ever made in that 6x6 foot space I cleared in the garage of my in-law’s house. Good work can happen anywhere.
It is also true, however, that the physical workspace and the work itself will often be in a symbiotic relationship: the space defines the means, scope, and size of the work, and then it flips, with the work defining the space required, both acting on one another to shape and grow a practice and potentially determining what the emerging work looks and feels like. So when the opportunity presents itself to level up your workspace, see it as a nudge from the universe and do it!
Expanding into what the work needs goes beyond physical studio space and leads us to the intangible aspect of “taking up” space. Making art often wants a certain kind of energetic, emotional, and intellectual sprawl. Our threads of curiosity feel their way into the world, we become receptive, we seek community, and listen for the signal in the midst of it all, exercising our voices and extending ourselves into the world. For most of us, it is perhaps the most difficult type of space that we allow ourselves. It’s up to us to let ourselves take up metaphorical and energetic space as well as physical space. Art-making requires generosity toward ourselves, and it also requires understanding and generosity from those we share our lives with. Art making consumes a slice of our bandwidth in relationship to others, to our personal down time, and to the responsibilities of parenting and day jobs. Even as we take care of these other parts of our lives, we must be able to say “making art matters”, and clear a space in our lives for it. Ultimately, we clear a space in ourselves.
I am curious: What do you think about these two types of space? What does your current workspace look like? How has that changed over the course of your creative practice? What acts of generosity (from yourself or others) have given you space for your work? What ways of taking up space (literal or metaphorical) have been important to you?
As always, thank you so much for reading. I’d love to hear about your experience in the comments!
Warmly,
Yes, I agree completely. I remember when I started giving my big chunks of studio time the same status as the other responsibilities in my life. It was hard to say no to so many things that I wanted to say yes to, but they nibbled at the expanses of time that I needed to really come into relationship with the work I was trying to do. It does make all the difference!
The best advice I ever got was from a spiritual director, when I didn't have enough space in my life (by which I mean TIME) for art. She said art takes a different kind of space (TIME) -- it can't happen between 2-4 on a Tuesday between other errands, at least it can't happen that way for ME. So I rearranged my life -- by saying NO to almost everything else -- to make space-time for my art ... and that, as Robert Frost would say, has made all the difference.