How the studio came to be

Tonight I am going to bite the bullet and add pictures to the blog.  A blog without photos is like a day without chocolate, too blah to contemplate.

The studio is the remodeled detached garage at the upper back of the house.  The previous owner of our new home, Dennis, originally built the garage to house his two antique cars.  It is about 22 feet square.  I needed a little more space, so we took the two single garage doors out, including the wall between them, replaced all with an overhead beam to hold things together, and began framing in the little bump-out addition.  A raised floor was also put in.  The picture above shows the work in progress.

This photo is  from the inside looking to the front of the building, the framing done, waiting for sheet rocking.  Dennis, who is also our builder, found the five 6-foot windows that make this wall so striking.  Because the studio is away from the street, on the upper level of the sloping yard, and in a wooded neighborhood, it is rather private, so I am still of two minds about hanging curtains there.

This next view is of the completed sheet rock, before it was trimmed out, primed, and painted.  There are two small windows (right photo) on the wall facing the lower terrace of the backyard and the house.  Despite this, it still left the back corner of the studio a little dark, but we solved the problem by adding two sky light for maximum natural light.

Bookcases are a big deal with me, so we had the top half of the back wall made into nine sections of bookcases with movable shelving.  The cases do not go all the way to the floor so I am able to move furniture around as I make different uses of the space.  Dennis trimmed the space out beautifully and painted everything in Benjamin Moore's Chantilly Lace in a satin finish.  How the light bounces!  The floors are plywood over the subflooring, tongue-and-groove, with three coats of urethane exterior varnish with white pigment added to it.  Even the air conditioning unit is white!  The only color will come from the elements of the studio itself.

In the center of the room are sets of strip lighting and two power cords that are ceiling hung for convenience in working at tables there.  

You can see the bookcases, and to the left, between the two small windows, is an old wall cabinet that was in my dad's shop.  Riaze, one of Dennis' carpenters, did a nice job of sanding

and re-painting it for me and adding open side

 shelves.

We were away when the room was finished, and my husband and I came home, eager to see the space.  When we opened the door, it was a shock to our senses, because everything was so pure white that we momentarily lost our sense of "up" and "down."  It was like walking into a totally negative space where gravity and walls and ceilings did not exist.  After a moment my world righted, but for that instant, I was in a white free fall.

I began filling it that evening with boxes of books, fabric, paper, thread-- all good things for making fiber art were stored in those boxes.  All the furniture has not come yet, several large pieces are still in the old studio space in Knoxville.  Unfortunately, I will have to wait 

for the movers to bring them (which means the Knoxville house has to sell). To make the materials accessible I have installed temporary plastic shelving for a large number of boxes.  This called for careful labeling.  Still, I cannot become distracted and leave things out while I work away at a table, because the boxes are a bother to navigate, and I trip over things regularly.

 

Since I have been away from regular studio hours the last several months, I dove right in.  I had a lovely weekend class with Margaret Cogswell in Asheville through the Cloth Fiber Workshop, and I finished the second of two pieces I began there.  And worked on a project for the Freestyle group back in Knoxville.  And enjoyed re-discovering old studio journals and sketchbooks that had been packed away for months and months.  The books came out of their dozens of boxes, and suddenly the wide-open white space is filling with all that color and texture that excites me.

Home at last!!!

So, you see, Cynthia, maybe I CAN do this blog, after all!