Holden Village, Washington
Chuck and I have spent the last several days unloading boxes that have been packed and stored since April. In those boxes were our art supplies. Taking them out of their many boxes was like finding old friends that had been held hostage and missing for months. I was so happy to see them, but they looked a little ratty and I was slightly suspicious of them as I pulled them out one by one. I passed a lot of judgment on those old friends as I sorted through them. It sounded a little like this. ”Oh, I love this. Oh, I don’t need that, these can go downstairs in a plastic bin. Where are my drawings…oh yes, wonderful. Here they are in this box.”
I don’t know what it will be like to paint in the front room of Chalet 6. Right now, it still looks like a bunch of art supplies sitting in a small bedroom. Perhaps it is waiting for our “art energy” to be injected into the space. I don’t know where I keep things yet and I know, since I have not painted since moving into this job for Holden in January, Chuck and I will have to make a lot of bad paintings before something decent shows up. We will have to learn how to dance together in a new small space. That will be a challenge since our paintings are usually at least as large as the windows in the new studio.
Of all the things I have missed since leaving Hallmark, Kansas City and the Midwest, I miss our art studio most. “The studio”, as we called it, was in an old brick seven-story warehouse, called the Hobbs Building, in a run-down part of town called “The Bottoms”. The Bottom’s was a derelict, abandoned part of the city and comprised the old warehouse industrial district. No one wanted to go there, and of course, it was why we loved it. It was also why we could afford it.
The Hobbs Building was built in the late 1800’s and had a slightly crooked water tower on the top. To get to our studio, after you’ve climbed a couple flights of old creaky stairs, you had to ride an ancient freight elevator to the 5th floor. It is the movie kind of elevator, with the big gates that you drive yourself. The kind that looks so scary that you opt for the stairs the first time you see it. The studio was 700 square feet, an enormous space, with brick walls, giant beams and a North view of the muddy Missouri river. The rent was cheap, and Chuck and I painted, made art and entertained friends in that space for 9 years. It was quiet, warm, and inspiring. We knew on day one it would be the best studio we would occupy in our lifetime. And we were right.
The jury is still out on what it will be like to paint here at Holden. The locations certainly couldn’t be more different. There, a dusty scratchy Midwest city, right across from Woodsweather’s Cafe, a greasy spoon in the morning and a tavern at night. Here, a remote mountain wilderness in the middle of the cascades. Like everything else lately, we will have to wade into the unknown space and find out.
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