The Pros and Cons of Renting a Studio
Studio space doesn't come cheap in the Bay Area (does anything?), yet hundreds of artists must rent in order to create. Abandoned warehouses, factories, offices, navy shipyards, aircraft hangars - all offer a place for artists to make BIG stuff and lots of it, with room to store what they can't or don't want to sell. Even successful artists usually have a largish inventory of unsold works, which must not only be housed but also conserved. Damp is to be avoided. Many of these disused buildings have leaky ceilings and little insulation, no central heating system, poor lighting, not much security. Despite these drawbacks, some artists are reluctantly paying around $2 per sq. ft. for a place to work seriously. A painter of large canvases probably needs a minimum of 400 sq. ft., so this would make an $800 per month hole in the budget. Scary!
I am one of those fortunate artists with a garage of my own and a husband with the know-how and energy to kit it out with drawers, shelves, and work surfaces. When we moved to our present house I started painting in a small utility room off the kitchen. A year later I graduated to the 'shop' end of the garage. As my paintings got larger, I made inroads into the space where we were supposed to park the cars; when they got larger still, the cars moved out onto the street. It wasn't long before the garage doors could no longer be opened because of all the canvases piled up in front of them. I bought flat-files, a large easel, lots of blank canvases. I needed more shelves to house my box-files of collage materials; movable plastic drawers for glues, paints, inks, fabrics, string, pens, rubber stamps, stencils; places to keep frames, matboard, a paper-cutter, cut plexiglass, etc, etc., etc.... Recently I bought an entire panel system for art festivals. HELP!!
Painting small is fine for some purposes. Easily portable art is useful for selling at art fairs and some buyers at open studios are often looking for something affordable which won't take up too much wall space in their homes. However, there comes a time in every painter's serious art life when the need to paint larger becomes pressing. I've reached that point. The largest pieces I've painted so far measure 4' x 6' and some of those have been triptychs in order to make them easier to transport in my mini-van . Inside me now there are 6'x 8' paintings clamoring to get out. But my studio is just too full of stuff, the ceiling too low, the space too narrow. And if I complete a painting of that size, where will I keep it? In the spare room? Already it's hard to detect the bed behind a stack of canvases and I need several weeks' notice before putting up guests. While they're here, I generally can't get much painting done because the studio then becomes a glorified, and not very well organized, storage locker. Renting an outside studio would seem to be the answer.
Recently I had the opportunity to put myself, as a member of a local art group, on the list for a brand new studio space in a newly converted building out at the old Hamilton Air Force Base in Novato. There will be about 8 studios in all, averaging 10'x 18', costing around $1.50 per sq. ft. The entire building is planned as a cultural center for the new town of Hamilton, with classrooms, a gallery, offices. In other words, it will be an arts community. Consider the advantages of that! Not only would you have a space to paint, but you'd be among other artists. I shall probably be teaching there anyway, so having a studio nearby would be very convenient. During open studio events there'd be more visitors. People like to go to places that house several artists in a small area - it's so much less trouble. The cost of publicizing such events would be shared with all the other artists, as opposed to my present huge postage expenses to lure visitors to my somewhat off-the-beaten-track house. Between painting sessions there'd be conversation, coffee, sympathy ....
I admit I was very tempted. Then I started to consider the disadvantages: the rent; the fact that there was open space above the walls, allowing the noise from one studio to leak into another, the commute (only 8 miles, it's true, but on busy freeway), the size (too small). At the moment, with my studio a few paces from my kitchen, I can paint while preparing meals, gesso a canvas while waiting for a phone call, create the moment inspiration strikes. The weather, traffic, time of day doesn't matter. I can get up in the middle of the night and make art if I want to! I wouldn't want to reconvert my studio back to a garage, so I'd end up having two studios - one off-site for large paintings only; one in the house for small collages. I'd probably end up having two sets of equipment and never having what I needed in the right place at the right time. Open Studio in my home has been a great success, in part due to the 'nosiness' factor. People love to come and poke around other people's houses and see how they live. Hundreds of people are familiar with my location and make the pilgrimage every year. Okay, they've really got to want to come to make the trip, but at least I'm not in competition with a bunch of other artists. When they're here, they stay! And make themselves comfortable. And see paintings as they look in a domestic setting, which is where they are probably planning to hang them. The money I save on renting an outside studio I could put towards bigger and better mailings.
So, for now, I'm staying put in my garage. My husband is going to remove some of the shelving to make room to paint large pieces, unstretched , on the wall. He's going to 'streamline the storage space'. I've already sold off some unused canvases and frames. And once a week I'll make the trip up to Hamilton to visit my artist friends who will be renting studios at the purpose-built cultural center, and I'll interrupt their creative flow with conversation, coffee, and sympathy.
© Ann Baldwin 2000