Welcome to Part 2 of the Sunday Studio Tour. In part one I took a drive down the memory lane of PRE-STUDIO. Where everywhere seemed to be studio.
In the winter of 2009 I got my first studio space. It was a little loft in a room of an industrial brick building on Ainslie Street in Brooklyn that was the sculpture studio of Arnie Zimmerman.
I loved going to that building. Once, working right on the other side of the door on the right hand side, the UPS guy banged insanely loud and scared the shite out of me. When I said to him ‘Damn you scared me’, he said ‘Yo baby, this is Brooklyn!’ 😁
I called it Macho Studios. It was either cold- no immediate heat, or really hot- no A/C with kilns running up to 2300 degrees, with no water close to my space and I had to carry 3 gallon buckets of water around and up and down the stairs. It was also loud and stinky. Arnie loved to run his old red fork forklift which was smelly and loud.
Arnie was prolific in his sculpture making, he LOVED to make work, you could see and feel it.
Arnie’s building was also a sculpture to him- getting huge steel beams and wood delivered, making platforms to house his archives and stairs to get to the platform. He even lifted me up on that forklift to put something somewhere that was at least 12’ high and hard to get to. Ack. That’s when I first dubbed the ‘Moving shit around’ department. It remains my studio credo to this day.
FIRST SPACE in Macho Studios, I had that area along the wall and then a little loft above it.
SECOND SPACE- Arnie built me a loft of huge steel beams and a metal staircase. It felt like a Parisian atelier with the windows. I thought the blue was painted, it was only many years later that I realized it was blue paint tape! Duh.
I learned how to fire a gas kiln there with Susannah from SKT Ceramics. .
It was trial by FIRE in Eric Hollanders kiln. Eric had a huge space in the back of the building and let us fire our work in his kiln. There were many late nights in the cold sitting by the kiln waiting and praying for it to get to temperature. Because even if you get a space and all the stuff to make ceramics, you need a damn kiln! It was def an afterthought 😂
Susannah and I came to Ainslie Street at the same time and cut our teeth on studio life. One thing you also do not realize from being in a community studio or school, is that at least 1/4 of your time is spent studio tech’ing. Mixing glazes, loading, firing & unloading kilns, mopping floors, hauling in clay, cleaning cleaning cleaning. And just general moving shit around.
Erics Kiln, and the pizza he made in it for the studio holiday sale:
Arnie also let us ‘rent’ his kiln, but I did not dare load it, push it in or fire it. That thing was HUGE.
First clay delivery from Amherst Clay!
And one day….I showed up to this LOL 😂
Arnie sold the building in May of 2014 & moved upstate to Hudson NY to build a beautiful new studio and sculpture garden. He deeply loved that Brooklyn building, the community and the neighborhood vibes, and I think it was sad to see it all change.
Arnie passed in 2021. RIP Arnie and THANK YOU for you, your conversations, your help, your building, your inspiration.
Farewell dinner. With the kiln converted to a bar.
Jan 2014 I moved my studio to Degraw Street AKA PRINCESS STUDIOS.
To be continued.