Welcome to the 258th installment of A View From the Easel, a series in which artists reflect on their workspace. This week, artists commune with a creek, regard their workspace as a sandbox, and build community in their red town.
Want to take part? Check out our submission guidelines and share a bit about your studio with us through this form! All mediums and workspaces are welcome, including your home studio.
How long have you been working in this space?
From a converted garage to studio, seven years.
Describe an average day in your studio.
Normally work in the studio after lunch to evening, creating handmade jewelry in small batches. When I enter the space I light incense, put on music (Patrick Wolf, Johnny Flynn, Florence + the Machine) or a podcast (Art Juice: A podcast for artists, creatives, and art lovers with Alice Sheridan and Louise Fletcher is a favorite to feel less alone in my solitary workshop.) Sometimes I simply open the windows and listen to the birds, wind, and stream.
How does the space affect your work?
My metalsmithing bench was made from a local live-edge maple, a favorite birch tree that sadly had to be taken down is now a stump to hammer metal on. I try to hold that reverence for nature by making my art practice as eco-friendly as possible.
How do you interact with the environment outside your studio?
I am in the middle of a hemlock forest, beside a stream. Nature is ever-present, out every window. As a member of the Hilltown Arts Alliance, we gather to support each other as rural artists, and hold a yearly Open Studio Tour. Not as isolated as we had thought before moving out from Boston, grateful for the rich art and music communities in Western Massachusetts.
What do you love about your studio?
Large enough to have separate areas to work in metal and glass, and even a small closet turned into gallery space. I love the serenity of being surrounded by trees and nature’s peace. The inside is a bit maximalist, as I am like a bowerbird, surrounding myself with thrift store finds and tag sale rescues. And lots of green.
What do you wish were different?
Running water, plumbing!
What is your favorite local museum?
Not very local to me anymore, but worth the two-hour drive: the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. It is where I go when I need to remind myself why I create, and in the winter for the cloister garden to keep me sane.
What is your favorite art material to work with?
Discarded shards of stained glass, collected ephemera from old catalogs I’ve hoarded for decades, recycled bronze, and sterling.
Sally Eckhoff, Stuyvesant Falls, New York
How long have you been working in this space?
Twenty-six years.
Describe an average day in your studio.
I don’t listen to music while I work. I’m not neurotypical and it’s too distracting. I can’t start until I’m awake around 10 or 11 in the morning. I animate and paint. And I drink a lot of coffee and beer. The life right outside my window is all woods; I basically live in the sky. I know Elmore Leonard said you should never write about the weather, but I paint it all the time. When I’m animating I work eight to 10 hours a day. When I paint it’s more like four or five. They use different parts of my intellect and the process is different. My workspace is always separate from my living space, but they’re right next to each other. This is solitude, and sometimes isolation, in the woods. I have an outdoor shower with a vined trellis over it. I invite the influence of my peers and also musicians and dead artists divine. Making the transition from animation requires at least a walk or a meal or an outdoor shower in between, or I go see my horse. He is my best friend.
How does the space affect your work?
I’ve accepted the limitations of a 20-by-22-foot workspace. I paint big! But it’s so great for animating. When the weather is fine I leave all doors and windows open. Animating is best done at night, because I fixed my pan lamps to a pedal and I only stomp on it when I want to blast the room. If it’s dark outside there are fewer inconsistencies in the exposures to deal with. (I use Dragonframe.) I make short animations about music, always with the permission and/or encouragement of the musician(s). As a musician myself, I go deep into the rhythms and colors, and especially the meanings, of the notes. I love to animate singing. Singers are from somewhere else!
How do you interact with the environment outside your studio?
Several years ago, I ran for public office up here. This is one of the reddest towns in New York State. I didn’t beat Butch the Fireman, but we got people to the polls. There’s plenty of art in Hudson and Kinderhook. I’m connected to Time Space Limited. Mostly I’m too busy to hang out. I know a lot of artists up here but mostly it’s just regular folks. I work at the local apple farm, Samascott’s. Lots of immigrant families on staff there. I’m really worried about them right now. I also volunteer at the High & Mighty Center for Therapeutic Riding and Driving. My horse is the top guy on their therapy horse string. He’s almost 30! So we both work with people with disabilities. My horse, Spot, has a disability too: He’s missing an eye. This is fairly recent and has helped a great deal with working with kids with disabilities. They think his difference is cool.
What do you love about your studio?
It’s mine. It helps me do what I need to do. It smells delicious. I feel safe here.
What do you wish were different?
Nothing, really, but at the time I had it built, I couldn’t afford a larger building. Now I wish I had one. My peeps up here don’t like to travel; it’s a pandemic hangover. And by “travel” I mean four, five miles by car. So I would like people to come visit me here more often. My house is an odd agricultural building more than 200 years old. Nobody knows what it was originally intended for. Three rooms, stacked one on top of the other. You enter through the second floor. And I want a cat again. My last one, Sharpie, died two years ago.
What is your favorite local museum?
Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art. The Clark Art Institute is good too. But I’d just as soon go to Storm King or visit artists in Newburgh, where Paige Tooker’s foundry is.
What is your favorite art material to work with?
Palomino Blackwing pencils. Good quality oil paint. I’m from two generations of paint manufacturers and have worked with paint all my life. My grandfather used to run a paint factory on Jay Street in Brooklyn.
Tim Eaton, Stamford, Connecticut
How long have you been working in this space?
Over 10 years.
Describe an average day in your studio.
My space is multi-functional. I use it for both my art practice and for a furniture and cabinet restoration business. I often start my day at around 8:30am gathering the necessary supplies and tools needed for my fieldwork with the hopes that by mid-afternoon, I can return and settle into either creating more art or promoting and cataloging what I have created. I have two separate collections or styles I develop more or less simultaneously. Each occupies different portions of the studio, which is divided by a wall. I refer to it as the “sandbox” because this is where I can spill, spatter, create dust, and generally “play” without too much concern for order. I bounce back and forth between traditional art and contemporary art as I believe the world has the capacity to appreciate all of it.
How does the space affect your work?
Because of the high ceilings and western light, I am motivated to spend as much evening time as I can in my studio. I enjoy the sunsets despite the immediate view of rooftops and giant freezer compressors for the ice cream factory directly below me.
How do you interact with the environment outside your studio?
I have other artists just down the hall from my studio. I also have photographers, lighting designers, a shoe designer, and a plaster studio as neighbors. I’m conveniently located on a street that is designated as a designer district with showrooms and upholsterers to the trade. I am on great terms with all of them.
What do you love about your studio?
I have ample space to be creative and conduct my business without being isolated. I love the light and the relationships I have built over years of being in the same building.
What do you wish were different?
I wish the ceilings were more hermetically sealed and that my windows were newer. Also wish the heating system worked better. Forced steam, ugh!
What is your favorite local museum?
The Bruce Museum.
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