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A View from the Easel, Part 4

CHICAGO — The fourth installment of a series in which artists send me a photo and a description of their workspace.

Philip A Hartigan

February 9, 2012 — 2 min read

CHICAGO — The fourth installment (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3) of a series in which artists send me a photo and a description of their workspace.

Elisa Pritzker, New York State (site)

I’ve been doing art since an early age and this is the first time that I have a big, real studio — a space where I can leave things out to dry without having to clean up. The left-hand side of the photo is a close-up of my working bench, with a few pieces that will be on show soon. The right-hand photo uses a landscape view from outside my studio. The studio is located at Casa del Arte in the Hudson Valley. It’s a unique building, reminiscent of a round-arched Mediterranean castle. It’s an amazing environment, and an ideal space for creating.

Melanie Parke, Chicago (site)

Until the money runs out I have the privilege of having two studios: a Chicago studio and a summer country storefront in Michigan. I keep both clean, sparse and mostly white. I chose this photo because it shows the contemplative side of my process. Collecting and editing images from mostly interior magazines, the heap of scraps reminds me that what we discard far outweighs what we keep. The pile on the floor is my discard heap.

I find a lot of visual stimulation in contemporary periodicals, looking for patterns, colors and objects and interiors which act as shard-like visual aids, spring-boarding a work or nestling into an existing one.

Grace Graupe Pillard, New York/New Jersey (site)

My studio is the space where I spend most of my time. I am involved in painting, a process which is both comforting and challenging. I am surrounded by my work, past and present, wrapped up, rolled up, together with what I am currently working on. Here I can be myself.

Adrienne Moumin, New York (site)

In the darkroom, I do wet chemical processing of medium-format film and gelatin silver prints up to 16’x20’. Film is developed in cylindrical tanks, and prints are made in a series of chemical bath trays. Sometimes I will later collage other papers, or 3-D objects, onto the faces of the prints. Other times I will make many copies of the same print, cut them up and then collage them into kaleidoscopic abstract patterns.