On Saturday, June 2nd from 3-6 we’ll be hosting an open studio at our space in the Waltham Mills. Wine and snacks, paintings and music. Some of my new work will be on view, in addition to Italian and Greek landscapes.
All are welcome, but we would appreciate an R.S.V.P. You can drop us a line at my email on the contact tab.
The studio is finally finished. Nearly, anyway. As you can see, there’s still some curtains to hang and tools to put away, but it’s getting there.
Soon enough now we’ll be done with it and have an open studio to celebrate. Enough with the construction.
It’s spring in Massachusetts and the weather is gloomy. The paintings I’ve been working on are all sunny effects, so I thought I’d take the time this morning to post some recent figure drawings. These are all pretty small.
Spending some time in sketch groups in america has been interesting- I hadn’t done 2 minute gesture drawings in about ten years. I’m not yet sure what to do in just two minutes, but it’s been fun to draw in a completely different environment. The studio is nearly finished, and doing some evening drawing classes has been a fun way to get the rust off a bit.
Here’s a few old portrait drawings. It’s been nice coming across old things as I finally unpack some boxes.
Silverpoint
Last year I started experimenting with metal point a bit. I took to using a silver point most, I really like the delicacy of line you can achieve with it as you layer and build up tone.
Silverpoint
These drawings are pretty small, around 8×10″ or so.
Silverpoint
Here’s a couple old portraits in Charcoal.
Charcoal and Pastel
Last month I bought a beautiful, though in dire need of repair, antique easel. I’ve since been restoring it. It’s a good, sturdy old easel, and it has some unique features integrated into its design… I figured it would be worth sharing.
The new studio easel
The easel’s made of oak…I could see clearly that it was old, as it had crumbling original varnish all over the parts that hadn’t been handled for some time. Much of the wood had splintered. The casters and crank mechanism were still in good condition, though needed some oil.
Upon further inspection, I found the company’s tag that produced the easel. F. Weber (now Martin/F. Weber Co.)still makes artist materials, though nothing like this old easel. They make mostly aluminum, tabletop easels from what I’ve seen today. I hadn’t ever heard of the company other than their partnership with Bob Ross to sell art materials. *edit 4/24/12 it appears F.Weber’s sister company, Martin Universal Design now does their easel production. You can check out the site at www.martinuniversaldesign.com for a list of their easels.
After looking a bit at their site, I understood that this easel must be from before 1919, as the company’s name changed after the death of Mr. Weber. Not a big surprise, as it takes about that long for a varnish to become as brittle and flaky as it was on the easel.
Here's a shot of the old cast iron clamps
Today, most of the easels in the states are made with plastic fittings that strip and ruin with time and use. I was very happy to see that most of the original cast iron pieces of the easel were still intact.
Interestingly, this easel’s crank system is unlike any I’ve seen before. Most ‘crank’ easels use threaded rod to lower and raise the shelf of the easel. This easel has instead a row of pegs.
Here you can see the row of pegs and the crank
The pegs are mounted and descended by a spiral-shaped piece of cast iron.
Another view of the crank system
In the picture above you can get a sense of how the easel raises and lowers. The cast-iron crank gives a great deal of stability for working, and less tedious raising and lowering paintings than other, threaded rod crank style easels…not surprising, I suppose.
When you use an old easel, you can’t help but to be a bit curious as to who used the easel before you.
I’m also curious if anyone’s come across this particular crank system before.
*Edit 4/24/12
I’ve gotten in touch with the good folks at Martin/F. Weber. They had a look through their old catalogues, and have told me that my easel is the Rembrandt Winding Studio Easel (either model number 17 or 18, I have elements of both, it seems). This design easel was produced from 1903 to 1919, so mine’s from somewhere in that arc of time.
The other day, I noticed for the first time part of the façade of the Beth Israel Medical Center- I had never noticed it was once the Massachusetts School of Art (which is now MassArt). It had been taken over by Beth Israel in the late 80′s. I was struck with the beauty of the stone carving and lettering. It’s at the corner of Brookline & Longwood, in the heart of today’s hospital district.
Façade of the old Mass Art building
The inscription on this side reads “Every genuine work of art has as much reason for being as the earth and the sun”.
Here’s the other entrance:
The other door
The other door reads “The useful and elegant arts minister to the comfort of man and gladden his eye with beauty”
Here’s a couple other shots of the building I found on the net:
an image of the building from the 50's
another detail
The most well known of Boston’s historic artist studios is still in use today. The Fenway Studios were built in 1904 and has continually had artists working in them since then…. and after becoming a national landmark it will continue to be. It’s written about extensively on their website.
Here is a video on youtube featuring two of the artists from the Fenway Studios. Gives you a pretty good sense of the building.
Another interesting defunct studio building is the Riverway Studios, now the Wheelock College library. The Riverway Studio building was built in 1915, under direction by Frank Benson and Ned Tarbell. I’ve read that DeCamp may have been involved in the design as well, though most places mention only Benson and Tarbell.
It was a popular Boston studio, where many painters of note, including William Paxton, Gertrude Fiske, Benson and Tarbell worked. Unfortunately, the studio’s use was short-lived, Wheelock College bought the building in 1944. You can read more about their renovation of the building here.
Visiting the building today, you can see very little evidence of the building’s previous use. The building has been renovated many times, starting the year it was bought. You can, however, still get an ethereal sense of what the spaces were like by the proportions of the room, and of course by the beautiful 15-foot windows that are still in place.
Though the trees on Boston’s Riverway now block much of the natural light, looking through the window you can still glimpse some of the skyline that appears in one of Benson’s etchings that he’d clearly done from the window. That’s about all that’s left of the artist studio that was there.
An Industrial North-Lit Space
Certainly one of the most difficult aspects of our move from Florence to Boston has been looking for a studio. Frustration abounds in Boston’s high-property-value environment…when I first arrived, other painters told me not to bother looking for a North-Lit studio, they ‘don’t exist’. After years working in a beautiful 19th-century artist studio, built explicitly for artists, I was determined not to spend long painting in my parents’ living room. And, well, bringing a bit of our Florentine-bred snobbery to our studio search helped. Eventually we found exactly what we were looking for.
Here’s a little about or search, or alternatively, What Not to Look for in a Studio.
Here in Boston, and I’m sure much of the Northeast, ‘Artist Loft’ is synonymous with ‘expensive yuppie condo an artist can’t afford’. Because of Boston’s frequent redevelopment of studio buildings ‘Artist Studio’ or ‘Loft’ have become keywords for realtors. So now, many of the so-called studio buildings shy away from working artists. After pressing just to just get the courtesy of a response at one building I received the following email-
Hi,
This building no longer offers artist discounts. We have one beds starting at $2500, please let me know if interested thanks!
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry
You know it’s bad when someone’s email is almost as brief as their signature.
Luckily, Boston has a strong sense of cultural preservation. The Boston Redevelopment Authority formed an Artist Certification program, which works to place working artists in appropriate new housing developments. Many of the studios advertised for sale on ArtistLink ask for BRA certification. There are guidelines for developers to follow as well, and many artists have placed themselves in beautiful, large, new studios for a fraction of the six figures that the condos sell for. That said, most artists I’ve spoken to have been on the BRA waiting list for years and years, and I needed a studio immediately.
In spite of all of my moaning above, many great art studios do exist in Boston, most of them organized in art associations. To protect the artists from being kicked out, many buildings have been purchased by the artists. I visited a couple studios at the Brickbottom Artist Association which were for sale, for well over $300,000 and $500,000, respectively. A little out of my market.
Eventually, we started searching a little further outside Boston. The old mill buildings around New England offer great high ceilings and open layout. I found a few listings on Boston’s meager artist section on Craigslist, below are a few photos from a space found on there.
Here's a very beautiful, raw space we found in Norwood.
Although this space was perfect in many ways, it had no heat or water, and would have needed months of work to turn it into a functional studio. It was way, way too far from the city as well. Fun to take a look at though.
Look at those North Facing Windows and Hardwood Floors
Suffice it to say that an ‘Artist Studio’ carries with it a very different connotation here in Boston than it did in Italy. Observing the cultural differences looking for a studio here, it’s become clear to me that in Italian, l’Artista carries with it a bit more dignity, in English, The Artist threatens a touch of bohemian depravity.
I saw artist studios in office buildings, cubicles complete with drop ceilings and office style wall-to-wall carpeting. We saw beautiful studios with creepy neighbors. More than once, I found a studio that would have been great, but they refused oil painters, they didn’t want to make a mess or ‘get their sink dirty’. People argued that my work was better suited to their South-East facing windows.
The worst of our studio search culminated in the landlord asking us if we had a knife on us (as usual, I wasn’t carrying), he then proceeded to open a studio door by jimmying it open with a large knife he produced from a closet, showing us what could be ours as soon as he evicted the current tenant. It was obviously a drug den, complete with pipe and blowtorch on the table. My wife had never seen anything like it, outside The Wire. After that, he told us about the robberies that had taken place in the hallway…for some reason he let us know that $5,000 and two pounds of marijuana had recently been stolen from his tenant. Realtors – take note in this unorthodox strategy.
While we were trying to escape that nightmare he performed for us the grand finalé of showing us a space that had walls of only unfinished cinder blocks, and although it wasn’t raining outside it sure was raining in there. Really, at that point we were pretty close to getting on a plane back to Italy. We were already next to the airport.
With a lot of patience, focus, and not compromising what I want in a studio, we found a fantastic space. Of course, North Light studios do exist in Boston. Like any other place on Earth, its buildings have four sides.
I’ve been real busy at the studio recently, trying to get the place finished, so I haven’t had a ton of time to do much here on the site…so, in the meantime, here are some recent efforts. Between searching for a studio, getting married, and moving, I haven’t had a great deal of time to paint… That said, I usually have my kit nearby, and when I’ve had a calm moment I’ve been able to sketch a bit.
Rockport, Morning
Bridge in the Morning
Nelson's Studio
Conscience Point, Long Island
Sunset, Beverly Farms
Since moving to the northeast I’ve noticed I’ve been painting a lot more overcast effects…I guess that’s not a surprise.
Here's my wife and father in front of our 3 big north light windows
After a long search, we’ve slowly started putting together a studio. It’s a nice big loft space in a traditional New England mill building. The good news is that the size of the room, proportion of the windows, and quality of light are all fantastic… The bad news is, there’s a lot of work to do on the place. The way the previous tenants had the loft set up really doesn’t work for us, so we’ve spent much of the holidays with a crowbar and hammer in hand, dismantling sheetrock walls and salvaging what we can of the lumber.
Here's some of the wood that will be exposed in the space, I've had time to treat some of it, in between trips to Home Depot. The light on the wall in the pic is from our spotlights.
One of the nice things about moving back to the states has been the ease with which you can buy and use building materials…. wood is just so cheap, and everywhere. It would have cost me a fortune to build something like this back in Italy.
I have a few paintings in the holiday exhibition at the Cooley Gallery in Old Lyme, CT. It’s a small works exhibit, each of these sketches are about 6×8″.
You can view much of the exhibition online here
