Welcome to the 298th installment of A View From the Easel, a series in which artists reflect on their workspace. This week, artists carve monumental wooden seagulls and relish painting and drawing on cardboard.
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.
Linda Yamada, Hamamatsu, Japan
How long have you been working in this space?
Thirty-one years.
Describe an average day in your studio.
I work after lunch until the evening, when time allows it. My work table is my dining table, teaching table, and painting table. Living, teaching, and painting make way for each other, yet inevitably I feel each influencing the same, shared space. The multi-purposing adds colors and character to each other’s use with bits of colors; sauces, paints, stains, or pencil marks. No ritual or routine, as time to paint comes when it can. Essentially the table is cleared, materials brought on and a cup of tea filled. I sit and look outside in quiet calm. Then begin. Quiet is preferred. I hear the outside sounds filtering in naturally.
How does the space affect your work?
My space is open — light, wide, filled with sky. Many widows all sides. I can watch the light, through the day, and the seasons. I find what I might want to paint in the light’s shading moving around my space.
How do you interact with the environment outside your studio?
I am a language teacher in my adopted country, Japan. This is my community connection; my creative side is quiet and solitary. There are art groups around me. I’m not connected to them. I’ve not always had the time and flexibility to enable this.
What do you love about your studio?
Light, sky, mountains and occasional seasonal visitors — birds, butterflies, dragonflies, and the like.
What do you wish were different?
Not much.
What is your favorite art material to work with?
Cardboard, colored pencil, acrylic, old magazines for collages. If I had to say one material, it would be cardboard.
Donna Dodson, Maynard, Massachusetts
How long have you been working in this space?
Ten years.
Describe an average day in your studio.
An average day in my studio begins at 9am. I normally work on one sculpture at a time from beginning to end. My process is based on sourcing lots of images from the internet or photographing myself or my husband to develop the sculptural composition that I am creating. I only listen to music because I can tune it out when I am running loud power tools.
How does the space affect your work?
Currently my space is very large so I can spread out, move my carving bench to the center of my studio, and bring in logs to season and dry before I work on them. In addition to my woodcarvings, I also do my large scale outdoor public art, so my space is ideal for that scale up to 10 feet high. For the Myth Makers monumental bamboo public art work that I create with my husband, Andy Moerlein, we have to rent warehouse spaces with 30-foot-high ceilings.
How do you interact with the environment outside your studio?
I am very involved in numerous volunteer civic committees in my town — currently serving on the Affordable Housing Trust. I support the local art galleries and open studios as much as possible. I travel to Boston, NYC, or LA to interact with the art community and my friends there.
What do you love about your studio?
The woodcarving bench in my studio once belonged to my grandfather, who used it for butchering meat. He bought me my first chainsaw and my work apron and he supported me in my life’s work of making art, so I love all of those connections in my studio.
What do you wish were different?
I wish I lived closer to larger urban centers like LA or NYC with a more lively, active and vibrant art scene.
What is your favorite local museum?
I love the ICA in Boston, the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, the Addison Gallery of American Art at Phillips Academy, and the Davis Museum at Wellesley College (my alma mater).
What is your favorite art material to work with?
My favorite art material to work with is wood, specifically logs I find or that are given to me by my friends and family.
