So the town of Cambridge has built a new multipurpose STEM and Art space called The Foundry. I still can not figure out who the board is and who is making the decisions for this space. They said they had available studio spaces available and the fee for them was flexible so I applied and was offered a space for 3 months for free. The building is on the other side of Cambridge so it is not exactly convenient, but I figured I would give it a try in hopes that I could potentially work bigger and messier than I can in our apartment.
The problem is I do not think they had a single working artist on the committee when designing the artist studio space. I could go on and on about the problems with this space. The actual room is lovely. But destroyed by a waist high divider that serves no purpose. There are shelves for materials but no spaces for vertical storage where one could put canvases or portfolios. There is a sink but no guidance about how to wash materials so as to not clog the sink. And the sink should theoretically be just a bit bigger with more space on the side. There is no designated wall to hang material on either. Unless people are doing small table size crafts the space is no more useful than my dining room table.
Still I am going to keep giving the space a try. During the week it seems nobody is there so I have the room to myself which allows for me to get into a quiet head space to work. This week I did not want to cart a ton of supplies. All I brought was some large paper, ink and some pens. Lately I have been focusing on mark making and being loose and trying to let go and experiment to help me get un-stuck. Since I like to draw from life and the only objects I had were my body parts I decided to just do an explore of hands and feet and phone selfies and reflections of myself in the glass
I was thinking of the following artists: Kara Walker, Larry Rivers and Mags Hambling. Could I be loose and somehow arrive at a page that is alive and tells a story of my being in this empty space drawing. My peers in critique group were very helpful in their observations. They pointed out that there is no variation in scale. Things seem to be on a grid (which could be good or not depending on what I want). We ended the discussion with the usual recommendation of “Do Another”. So hopefully I will.
But yesterday I didn’t want to leave the house. I was hoping to spend some time reading but I also wanted to make Flax Aquafaba to use when Ethan and Chris are here next weekend and experiment with seeing if I could make a dairy free, soy free, egg free gingerbread dough so Nikko could have some cutout gingerbread cookies. And I did!!! Between baking and boiling I drew the dried flowers again and ended up with the surprise drawing below. I think it will end up being a gift.
