Studio Views

Brian Evans – View Work and Bio

Dianne Evans – View Work and Bio

COVID –19: Challenges and Successes in the Studio

When discussing our artwork, we normally address this topic as independent artists. Since we are spending much more time in the studio together, due to the quarantine, we thought that combining our experiences was a better approach in this case. The biggest benefit of working together is sharing ideas and asking one another for constructive input. One immediate realization is that we need a much larger studio. Adjusting to two people in a 400 square foot workspace has been a challenge. Thankfully our dog “Wagner” doesn’t take up much space. Wagner is enjoying spending every waking hour with us.

COVID-19 has also affected our work habits and creativity. We both have had more time to experiment with new ideas and to see those ideas evolve and come to fruition. In exploring new ideas, we have had successes, but we have also had some ideas that didn’t work out the way we anticipated. That is a part of the creative process. The unsuccessful projects can be positive by taking aspects that you like and allowing them to evolve in a new direction. Without the added pressure, we are able to explore all avenues of creativity.

Due to the quarantine, we have had to make adjustments to our daily lives. We have had show cancellations, galleries have closed, and Brian’s classes at Orange Street Pottery have been postponed. Dianne has been working from home for UNCW as well as working in the studio evenings and on weekends. It has been somewhat of a luxury to have the time to be more creative without having to worry as much about deadlines. We are building up inventory in anticipation of things opening back up in the summer or the fall. We are adjusting well, but we are looking forward to new opportunities.

Checking in from Wilmington, NC

PRE PANDEMIC, like every other artist I know, being “isolated” in my studio had been the times to crave.  No one calling me to come downstairs, I wasn’t wallowing in my own guilt of “shouldn’t I be making dinner, cleaning the house, doing the laundry?” as I tried to be super woman… As someone who grew up during the MS. Generation, I was constantly pushing to be the best I could be in everything. All I ended up being was exhausted. And irritable.

Life changed last summer when my husband and I decided to move and relax our type A personalities a bit. I was extremely lucky to find such a welcoming art community, classes to teach at the museum were going gangbusters, with a waiting list each semester, I had signed contracts with 2 galleries and my 2020 out of state workshop calendar was full almost every month.

Like everyone else that came to a crashing halt mid-March. Ok, in a few weeks this too shall pass. Uh, nope. “new normal” isn’t normal at all. But I do find solace in painting, though I haven’t attempted any big canvasses lately, I am happy doing a lot of smaller works. Thanks to social media and other avenues, I am selling small works to old and new clients. It keeps my brain active, and my personality is a lot lighter after a good session in the studio. (ask the husband). Right now my favorite question is “what day is it?”, but as long as I am painting, baking, exercising, and even teaching online, the glass is half full. I say my gratefuls every day; we are good, my kids are good, and I meditate and am thankful to be alive, and happy…becoming more mindful of each moment has become my daily goal.

Art brings joy to the world, and we need more of both right now.

Jeri Greenberg, PSA IAPS-MC

My art studio has been very versatile lately.

As a native New Yorker, I have many loved ones who have been strongly impacted by the Coronavirus.  Two of my close relatives contracted COVID-19, and many more were directly exposed to it.  While emailing with one of my nieces, she told me that her 11 year old daughter is obsessed with art.  I arranged for her to have a FaceTime studio visit.  We spent over an hour discussing each other’s art.  She loved seeing a working artist’s studio, even the overstuffed storage closet and the supply shelves and cabinets.  Her mother informed me that is the most her daughter has spoken since the quarantine began.

Via FaceTime I am also using the computer to make a hard cover book with my 9 year old granddaughter. It’s called MIMI AND ME: The Four Seasons.  We are each contributing drawings, paintings, stories and photographs relating to the seasons of the year.  It is challenging for her as she lives in Florida and all of the seasons are so similar.

Amid my paintings and projects, I am also using my studio for some non-art related endeavors.   It has been converted into a zoom yoga studio (I just push the easels aside and roll out my mat.); a hair salon (My hair stylist prompted me via zoom how to do a different kind of coloring.); and a place of worship (My husband and I attend online services.  Our dog joins us, but he snores for the duration).  On Easter we had a zoom visit with our immediate family from Maryland, Colorado and Florida.  Everyone wore some version of an Easter bonnet.  My husband was reluctant to wear the Baltimore Ravens cap with a papier-mache bunny on top which I created for him.  His was voted best bonnet!

As my art style is abstract and semi-abstract, it is a perfect vehicle for me to express my thoughts and emotions at this time – getting back to basics, a shift in priorities, faith, silence and isolation.

One beautiful, warm, sunny, breezy day I decided to paint outside.  The wind took my large canvas as a sail.  A bug got caught in the wet paint.  I noticed I had dripped some paint on my brick patio and I immediately sprayed it down with the hose before the paint dried.  I then noticed that my painting had also been sprayed.  That is when I decided to retreat back to my beloved studio, my happy place even in the best of times.  I am especially grateful for it during this troubled time.

“The Great Pause”

The first week of March was the last normal workweek for most parts of the country and little did I know that on March 27, 2020, life would take a Great Pause.  The Covid-19 Coronavirus Pandemic made sure of that.

Our Governor issued a “Stay at Home” order to begin and then implemented the social distancing guidelines. For many artists, “stay at home” and the 6- foot social distancing guidelines aren’t far from our norm.  We are a solitary people anyway, paint by ourselves, so we’re not really meeting a lot of people in our studios. PleinAir painting with my artist friends is no longer taking place so most of my time is spent working in my studio.  This “pause” has given me the needed creative space to branch outside of my comfort zone and try ways to take my artwork to new levels.  I’m using this time to create and engineer free standing Copper Sculptures and to find ways to add more movement into my Woven Copper Designs.

My day begins with finding inspiration from walks in our vegetable and flower gardens, to see new beauty blooming, fresh colors appearing and experience sweet springtime scents. This inspiration takes me into my studio with a certain calm which I am incorporating into my new works. .

As with most others, during this unsettling time, we make a grocery list, grab our masks and gloves and go to the store one day a week early in the morning.  Is this going to be the new typical day people ask?  It’s hard to image how a day will be after the pandemic is over.

Sheltering in place has become a time to rethink and reimagine, to be receptive to the concerns of others, to develop and seek comfort within. I am grateful for this pause to create, but I am very much looking forward to reconnecting with my family, friends and my creative community in person again.

When the news of the corona virus hit, I started watching TV news for the first time.  I was mesmerized.  Then I joined Facebook.  Facebook, that I had always eschewed, suddenly presented itself as a good idea: a way to stay in touch with friends and family now that everything was altered.  So between the vortex of TV News (several stations, and several narratives) and the rabbit hole of Facebook (endlessly addictive), I lost my motivation to go out to the studio and face my inability to focus on painting.

But one project did call to me… just a bit……..an idea that has popped into and out of my head a few times over the years:  I have accumulated so many used paint brushes –hundreds and hundreds of them. .  They’re no good for painting anymore, but I’ve never thrown them out, even when I stopped using them.  I’ve often thought they could be used someday, in some way, artistically, sculpturally, and so, this project began when I realized this was a different time now.  Sort of an interlude where we were all assessing things…What’s what? Where is this going?  What’s to come?

In my kitchen cabinet I have a large container of wheat flour that I never use.  I Googled “wheat paste”. I learned what to do. Rip up some newspapers.  Mix up the flour and water on the stove.

“I can give this brush a face”, I thought…so I began paper-macheing faces on my old paint brushes. Personifying them. One at a time…making new friends, out of old friends,  during the time of quarantine.

I’m waiting for the pegboard to arrive, so I can affix them to their place.  “Thank You For Your Service” will be the title.

This project has loosened me up to get back to painting….to turn off The News…to experiment again with paint on canvas…to play in present time….to see what unfolds, day after day.

“Art in the Time of Corona”

As an instructor and adventure traveler who designs artist getaways/workshops…the seismic shift that is Covid-19 brought me out of the clouds and back to earth rather quickly. As well as back into my studio. My home studio is small but gets lots of light. It has become my haven, a cove in which I have settled into a daily routine of art-making. This was not the case before. Outdoors, the various air bnb’s that make up my temporary homes away from home and all the classrooms I teach were my primary studio spaces. I had learned to be efficiently mobile with my art supplies.

What I am enjoying in this time of quiet and stay-at-home, is a reconnection to what I love about a disruption…it feeds our creativity and sends us into imaginative problem-solving mode. There is much entropy in my studio these days, a sea of plastic storage bins scattered about, tubes of paint, brushes, craft papers, paper towels and lots of paint drips on the floor. The ever-present tripod and video setup greets me each morning as I transition my space into a virtual classroom and multimedia production studio. Multiple canvases in progress leaning against the wall waiting their turn for time on the easel. I love that I have that easel time, and my favorite tools at my fingertips. Now if I can just get it better organized! My studio always feels like the laboratory of a mad scientist. I didn’t always give myself the daily permission to focus on my art-making, there was always another work distraction. A wearer of many hats. Amazing how we artists tend to get into a rhythm of neglecting our own process while encouraging and sustaining others. I am finding a balance and staking a claim.

I’ve always been aware that artists and creatives thrive on disruption, perhaps why I enjoy the challenge of travel, plein air painting, mixed media experimentation. We have to adjust and think on our feet. It provides new perspective, new colors, new layers on our world and history and space. As an anatomist of the world, I am embracing the unknown, making new art, and…staying home.

Tuesday, March 17, we flew out of the San Francisco airport. We had been in California visiting our children and grandchildren for two weeks, watching as the streets grew emptier, the grocery lines longer and I had been constantly worrying we would not be able to get home. So grateful when we landed in Wilmington. We got our dog from the vet and hunkered down to self monitor and stay at home for two weeks. We joined the NPR wine club and learned a lot about online ordering.

Enormous gratitude for my friends.  One of them delivered supplies and equipment I needed to work from ACME and returned a few days later with a huge bag of fresh mustard greens. Two other friends brought my ceramics tools and partially finished work from Cape Fear Community College when the campus closed. I waved from the window. We ended the two weeks at home – with no symptoms – right as the NC stay at home order went into effect.

Try as I did, I just could not get work going – feeling scattered and distracted. And I could not take the constant news on the radio. I tried painting on the porch, working at a table by the window. Then another good friend and studio mate gave me a lifeline: painting to audio books from the library. Magic. I have been all over the world thanks to my headphones and the New Hanover County Library. And now I am back social distancing in my studio at ACME – even more appreciating the light, my good easel and having all of my stuff at hand.

Against all of these changes, I do not know if this is the most beautiful spring ever – or if I was just finally forced to stop and look. We sit on our back porch and marvel at the incredible spring weather, watch the hawks hunting, and look for the bats that come out each night.

When we first started to social distance, I thought that my life’s changes were minor. The biggest part of my day continued to be focused on painting but without concerns about teaching and delivering paintings to shows and galleries.  Now after weeks into it, I realize my life has changed quite a bit. The subject of my paintings has quite organically taken the theme of one of my favorite places to paint and I find that I have escaped to Bald Head Island!  From my photos I am revisiting the expansive skies, the outstanding view from Captain Charlie’s Station and the glorious beaches.

I find that now I have time to watch other painters do demonstrations on the computer and to experiment with techniques and colors.  I am visiting with old friends and family more often through video chatting and phone calls.

Although at times I am eager for the isolation to end, I consider myself too fortunate to complain.  My husband of 45 years and I laugh throughout the day. I have wonderful neighbors with whom I occasionally chat.  I can take walks, bike, weed in our flower beds and there is plenty of time to explore new dinner dishes knowing I will find a continuous array of food from our supermarkets.

I am keenly aware that life is not like this everywhere and that many people are very fearful.  Although I feel I am living in a bubble, I am following the news and the virus information closely and am very attentive to how our world’s story and the local narrative are unfolding.