Live / Work / Space

Weldon Street studio under construction

What is the function of the studio?
1. It is a place where the work originates.
2. It is generally a private place, an ivory tower perhaps.
3. It is a stationary place where portable objects are produced.
The importance of the studio should by now be apparent; it is the first frame, the first limit, upon which all subsequent frames/limits will depend.
Daniel Buren, The Function of the Studio

Studio: from the Latin studium meaning eagerness or zeal. (wikipedia.org)

I have recently moved into a new studio space in the attic of my house. Although this move was dictated by practical concerns, it has also led me to consider the benefits of a live/work space, as well as to reflect on the purpose of the studio for my work and my life.

Is the studio just a means-ends set up, as Daniel Buren seems to suggest in the epigram quoted above? An ivory tower for the production of luxury goods? Is it, instead, as Daniel Arasse puts it in reference to Vermeer, a pictorial laboratory?

I prefer to think of it as the latter, but maybe that’s just wishful thinking. The fact is, that so far my work is made in a space that is called a studio; it hasn’t yet become a cottage industry for luxury goods, but maybe that is just a matter of time. A certain amount of experiment, critical thinking, and labour takes place in the studio, but maybe laboratory is overstating it. I think it is a space of inquiry, of work on questions that don’t have any fixed answers, a place where I try to build meanings out of the fragments of life.

For me, the studio is a prism that gathers the different wavelengths of life and both breaks them into constituent parts, and weaves them back together in a slightly different form, one that allows new understandings and questions to arise. By folding domestic and work space together, I hope that these two spheres will become even more closely entwined.

Weldon Street studio, 2015