From a Basement on the Hill: Prologue

Friends, parents, and other followers, lend me your eyes! A new project is afoot! When I'm not teaching, digging in the dirt, or desperately trying to rewire an old light fixture, I'm an artist with my main studio in our basement. Over the past year or so, I've become less and less in love with the closed off nature of this space. The false walls that break it up and block the front windows are just not working for me anymore. So, my summer project is to open up, clean up, and brighten up this space, starting tomorrow! Here's one last look at what came before:

Getting There...

This weekend we made some progress on the entryway. After some antiquing outside Leesburg (this place has great stuff and prices) and some Craig's List shopping, we've got a mirror to check our teeth for food bits before we leave and a coat tree to dump our coats and bags on when we arrive back home.




Also note my granny's old sewing machine serving as a catch-all table and the little chest (made by my granddad for my grandmother's vacuum cleaner) serving as a place to take off and store shoes. Now if we could just do something about that light fixture, we'd be in business.

We also broke out the circular saw and made some headway in the studio. We lined the walls with homosote, which is usually used as a sound proofing and insulation material. For an artist, it makes a nice smooth, soft surface to take up drawings and paintings while I work. Today I'm cleaning up and painting. Almost in business down there too.

Shop Class

Some of you may know that I make art from bed sheets. So, this means I have a sizable (approx. 700 lbs.?) collection (see the pile in the lower right?) that pretty well documents the lower and middle rungs of the US bedding textile market from the last few decades. Sheets are heavy, and bulky. My mom and I turned my basement/laundry room/future studio into a woodshop for the past couple of days to build some shelves from some lumber she tore out of her attic. (My mom is kind of a bad ass.)

I don't have any good photos of the process of constructing these shelves, since I was busy not cutting my fingers off. However, I can tell you we basically constructed two ladders of 2x4's, made a back brace to hold them together, then cut plywood planks to rest on the rungs, forming shelves. Measuring is extremely important, as are ventilation, a solid drill, and good hammering skills.





Did I mention measuring? Because that was important.