Building infrastructure

Inside the studio, newly painted walls • photo © 2011 Karen Lynn Ingalls

The turning of this year seems, for me, to be about building infrastructure of one kind or another.

The work I'm doing in my studio – painting walls, putting up shelves, reworking and organizing the space - the work I've been doing building websites (they're coming!) for my painting and my teaching, and the demonstration examples I'm making for this summer's workshops are kind of like roads, hospitals, and public works projects. You need them to get things done, to make things work. You depend on them.

Home page of one of the new websites • photo © 2011 Karen Lynn Ingalls

So, at some point the walls will all be painted, the shelves will all be up (it's a work in progress), and the paintings and canvases will be stacked on them neatly. The websites will be up and running, with all the information anyone needs or wants to know about my paintings and my classes and workshops. The sample work will all be done and photographed, and everything will run ever so efficiently....

Am I dreaming?

Okay, at least a bit more efficiently. I hope. I can hardly wait! Now, back to work....

The studio project

Painting in the studio (see the great light from the skylight and window?) • photo © 2010 Nathan Ingalls

I am blessed to be able to use as my studio part of a barn near Calistoga. I have two skylights, two windows, and amazing light; two doors, one with ramp access and the other one a big barn door (great for bringing big paintings in and out).

Insulating with wool in progress

photo © 2010 Karen Lynn Ingalls

Slowly, I've been getting work done on the studio as well as in it. When I was searching for a good (and cheap) way to insulate the walls, another painter suggested sheep's wool, which is sometimes used for insulation in England and Canada. A renewable resource – it's green! And I knew people with sheep and wool and no place to take it, which is how I wound up insulating the barn walls with wool. My landlord also gave me some old foamboard insulation, which sped up the process enormously. I like that this has been a green project – keeping both the wool and the foamboard out of the landfill.

Insulating with wool in progress

(I used the white PVC pole to tamp the wool into place behind the board) • photo © 2010 Karen Lynn Ingalls

All but two sections of wall are insulated now, and most of them are covered by oriented-strand board. Lately, I've been working on filling gaps in the wall with expanding foam and spackle, cutting off the foam and sanding it and the spackle, and priming the walls. I'm working on one side of the studio, and I'm happy to see it all beginning to come together....

Getting a little enthusiastic testing colors

photo © 2011 Karen Lynn Ingalls

The next step is to paint over the primer. This side of the studio will have darker walls. I went a little overboard in my enthusiasm (and confusion) about what direction to go, color-wise. It was fun, though. (Beware those little tester paint pots – they are soooo seductive. And some of the test colors I mixed myself with student-grade acrylics.)

My Mark Rothko wall

photo © 2011 Karen Lynn Ingalls

I thought this wall was looking a bit like Mark Rothko.... (No, I didn't really need to paint the light strip in the middle - I just really, really wanted to turn the wall, for a moment, into an homage to Rothko. The temptation was too great.…)

Zoe, enjoying the view from the studio at twilight

photo © 2010 Karen Lynn Ingalls

I think I've settled on wall colors now (none of the ones you see above). I tested them next to nearly every painting in the studio. We'll see how they work!

In my studio

Karen Lynn Ingalls in the studio • © 2010 Nathan Ingalls

My nephew, Nathan Ingalls (a young cinematographer – you'll be seeing more of his work in years to come, I know), took this photo of me in the studio earlier in the summer. This was one of the "arty" angles he was having fun with – taken through my paint brushes. In it, I'm facing the painting that is in this year's catalog for Open Studios (it's not on the web, though).

Karen Lynn Ingalls in the studio • © 2010 Nathan Ingalls

Yes, that's an ironing board serving as my taboret (a table for holding one's palette and paints). It works well for painting on location, too, believe it or not. You can adjust it to different heights for sitting or standing. I got the idea for it from a photograph of a painter – maybe Frank Gannon? – working en plein air (in the open air, on location), in the Santa Rosa Press Democrat.

I work from my own photographs, though I don't usually print them four to a page. Now that we have digital cameras, I crop my compositions on the computer before I print them.

Although it's a little dark, you may be able to see behind me, in the wall right around the window, some of the wool I've used to insulate my studio (I still have part of one wall to go!) in part of a rehabilitated chicken barn. That wool came from the same sheep I've been painting lately. I have a lot to thank them for!