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Where do you make your art work? - The Open College of the Arts

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Where do you make your art work? thumb

Where do you make your art work?

me listening intently at an evening studio crit.
me listening intently at an evening studio crit.

Where do you make your art work? Having a stable place to make work is one of the strongest indicators for me as to how easily a student will manage to complete their course.  Making art work can be such a fragile thing that needing to get something out or pack something away can be enough to destroy it.
For some people, walking or being somewhere else is key to unlocking creative thinking, and so too can a degree of displacement and foreignness be exhilarating and inspiring, but for most people ‘a room of one’s own’ is still a basic requirement.
I am currently halfway through an 8 week stint at Rhubaba studios in Edinburgh. Rhubaba is a small group studio whose membership and visiting artists are selected because they have a shared field of enquiry. This means that it is much easier to engage in serious critical conversations and creative collaboration. In many group studios there is no selection process and although this is great for some, it can mean that you have almost nothing in common with your neighbours – you hate their work and they hate yours!
The studio holds crit nights for members as well as staging exhibitions and making links with other organisations across the UK. Being there is a great way to feel part of something bigger and be supported professionally through that.
Artist’s studios are often very low cost and it might well be something students consider as part of their studies. It will give you a space that you can be as messy as you like in, but will also give you another support structure and colleagues to look at your work and discuss it with you. Quite often being in a studio will give you preferential rates for exhibiting if they have  a gallery, or they may have a members open exhibition annually. Some studios set up exchanges and you may find there are even opportunities for foreign travel.
There are so many different kinds of studio spaces, if it is something you are interested in then there is no need to settle for your first discovery. Consider setting one up if you have a few like minded friends, or look at  exhibitions in your area and see where the artists are based to see if you can find a studio with artists that would inspire and be useful to you. When I arrived at Rhubaba it was hosting the artist Augusto Corrieri, an artist with an alter ego magician. A few nights later we were treated to a marvellously intimate and engaging deconstructed magic act and I realised how lucky I was to be given the opportunity to work here.
Most studios do not have an ’entry requirement’ or assessment of any kind – so you needn’t feel that being a student or early on in your career would hamper you. In fact I imagine that many studios would be only too happy to have someone keen and enthusiastic who has shown that they have the motivation to undertake distance learning tuition. I certainly would have when I was on the management committee of Phoenix Studios in Brighton. Group studios are a tried and tested pathway from art college and as mature students you may find distance learning in a group studio more conducive than a bricks and mortar college full of teenagers would have been!


Posted by author: Emma Drye

3 thoughts on “Where do you make your art work?

  • My name is Jo Keeley and I am in the final year of the MA fine art course. And I have worked in my bedroom. This room has been my studio/office.bedroom for the whole four years. Furthermore my work is usually 40in by 40in when I am painting, I have a 3 foot square area that I can work in. I am a single parent and work full time plus a dog and no spare money or time, meant that I had to work from this area, I have been criticized that my work has no value as I paint just faces… however I have to argue that painting in such a confined and intimate place has made the work intimate and confined and adds merit to the work. One year I spent the whole seminar using photography and i also confined myself and my daughter who agreed to be a subject matter as well we confined ourselves to the small shower room that leads off from my bedroom and only ventured into the hallway, by being confined increased self confidence due to privacy at the time the work was being created, therefore I agree that a studio setting can be of immense value to many and yet unrealistic to those who are unable to venture outside their homes due to constraints that for many students may be real concerns, so if you are constrained use that constraint to your advantage!!

    • Hi Jo – it sounds as if you do have a studio! I have many students who not only work in small spaces such as yours but also have to pack away every sign that they have been working after each session. Even then, of course people manage to produce great results. I thought it was worth raising the idea of renting a studio for some people who do have the resources, and maybe reassuring people that it is something that is open to them. As a tutor I have become very aware over the years of the immense amount of support received by students from family members and the very wide array of space / model / time solutions students have conjured up for themselves. I remember one lucky drawing 1 student whose husband built her a studio in the garden! Conversely I remember one prisoner student whose materials were regularly confiscated or stolen and who had to make a still life out of soap due to lack of objects. Although its not related – I’m a bit concerned that someone may have said to you that paintings of faces have no merit. Maybe get back to that person for clarification. Will you get to the Rembrandt? – lots of faces there!

    • Jo
      I find your description of working place and practice really helpful and inspiring. I am lucky enough to have half of a well lit attic space which I have filled with my art stuff but still find it incredibly difficult to work as I feel that I don’t have the emotional space. A demanding job, chronically long term ill son and ill husband seem to sap all my energy or at least offer a great excuse of ‘I don’t have the time’. The way in which you see your privacy and confinement in your art is really interesting; my confinement has a different nature but I certainly shouldn’t use it as an excuse but now think I could see it as an opportunity for developing a particular type of relationship to making art.
      Thank you
      Liz

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