Studio V2.0

After settling in to my lovely new studio space, an opportunity arose in the same artist's co-op to move into new digs that would include use of a common teaching area. Of course I had to jump on it! I had almost finished setting up when it was time to tear it all apart again and re locate into two (of 7) smaller studios that are clustered around an 8 person work table. Actually the move wasn't all that horrendous. I piled the contents of a shelving unit onto a rolling cart, rolled said cart a few hundred feet to the new space, downloaded the supplies onto the common table, moved the shelving unit, re stocked the shelves, and repeated about 10 times until everything was re-situated.

Original space

Now I have a separate room for supplies and teaching equipment, and another for clay work and soldering. And I just love it. It feels so much cozier in the smaller unit, and I can just roll my chair around to move from station to station. This studio is very different from the one in my tiny apartment in LA. There I had to keep almost all of my tools and supplies in drawers because there wasn't enough room to spread them around and let them lay. And I didn't want my living space to look too messy. Here I have an entire 'bench' (Ikea table) to dedicate to sawing, soldering, and use of the Foredom. I get to keep my vise and bench pin clamped to the table, instead of putting them away after each use and never have to worry about tiny pumice stones jumping out of the lazy-susan pan and ending up in a kitty's tummy.

1. The conference table points directly to my window. 2. My clay/computer desk
is situated in front of the window. 3. The soldering and metal work bench is located
against the back wall. The kiln *may* move to the storage room, and the 20 drawer
unit was found on Craigslist for 20 bucks! 4. My storage studio has room for a couple
more tables, perhaps for the kiln, a soon to be purchased belt sander, and definitely
the very loud vibe tumbler. The wall was already painted when I took custody.

The only possible negatives to this arrangement are that: 1. There's no way to vent fumes to the outside in this internal, cinder block, room so I'm going to get a small venting fan from Rio for when I'm soldering and I'll run the kiln as I leave for the day so the nastiness can dissipate during the night. 2. The common table is available to other folks, for instance the three lovely people who have been having an actual conference while I've been typing this, or the kids ceramic class that meets here 2 Saturdays a month. But I can schedule as many days with the table as I like and most of the time it's pretty quiet around here. And I'm right next to the cafe (nom nom)! I can deal with the tiny inconveniences for a set up like this.