Wedding Rings

Athena and I picked up our wedding rings this month...

 We worked with a jewelry designer named Karin Jacobson, she owns Karin Jacobson design where all of her jewelry showcases a wide variety of style and type from necklaces to rings to bracelets and more.  It tok me several months to chose a place to go for our wedding rings, and I chose perfect.  

Karin worked with us to design the rings, and it was fast, it was fun, and overall Karin gets our business in the future.  

This is the set, Athena's engagement ring, her wedding band and mine.

Here are a few pics of Athena's engagement ring, it is a natural 1.04ct green diamond set in palladium. 

Thanks for the fantastic wedding rings Karin, they are works of art...

...we love them.

Studio #8 - 2509 Pleasant Avenue South

Since 1997 I have always lived in my studio.  Now that I live with my fiance Athena, and we intend to have a baby someday I cant live in the toxic chemical environment of an art studio.

So I converted our garage into my new Art studio!!!

My 8th studio in Minneapolis is a garage, yep people my wife to be needs something better than living in a studio, so we are renting a house (the roommates downstairs suck).  It was pretty cool the two of us, our two dogs and 1 cat all living in a working art studio that was only 800 or so square feet.  

here are some of my old studios over the years...

...you have seen all of these in my past posts on my studios.

This is my new studio...

...right to left panorama.

I have already been fairly productive here, except for the time I needed to recover from the accident.  I finished the final touches to the studio a few weeks ago.  Funny as it is, I will be moving on in three months to a new larger house with a larger and better studio.

Thanks for reading...

...check back with me soon; I promise there are interesting things to come.

My studio environments.

As an artist in Minneapolis, I have built or converted 7 spaces into live-in art studios.  I refuse to waste money and pay for a rental studio surrounded by an undisclosed number of other studios with other artists energy and work habits.  If I wanted that boxed life I would have become a graphic designer and worked in a cubical.  The money saved on studio rental, is money that I have used on needed and expensive professional grade supplies instead. 

I have always obligated to be moments away from my work.  I used to keep an easel by my bedside, so when I would wake my current work I was contemplating would be right there, my first thought, and imprinted into my mind for the rest of the day.  I was then able to keep my paintings in my mind, making compositional choices as I went about my day.  When I returned home to the studio, my contemplation was over and I immediately could start working. 

I have always constructed my studios toward my needs as a painter. Which are truly the needs of my relationship with my chosen medium - oil paint.  All relationships demand a certain level of yearning obligation, and oil painting is the most demanding mistress.  Per her request, I prefer to have the walls of my studio painted to be the bluest white possible.  Cold, malleable, and unnatural so I can set the tones with filters on lighting.  I use cheap unnatural florescent lighting and have always needed to balance out the yellow quality of that lighting.  Studios are what they are: work spaces, and each artist will know what they need.  What I use is vastly different than what another will.  Working with oils paints require a certain kind of studio.  If my current series of oil paintings is about contrast, my studio reflects that; if my work is about calm, my studio is calm.  

     

I keep my working environment just as a stage in theater, a set up conceptually.  That way I can have the total experience of my concepts.  Sounds silly, fake, or just too much?  Maybe, but it is how I do it and it works for me.  I can be playful, but when it comes to my work, which I consider my life's work, I am serious.

Over the course of 9 or so posts I am going to tell the stories of my 7 past studio spaces, most of which are interesting tales.  The Studios of my past have always been exactly what I need.  

Check back soon...
...something interesting is coming.