The Studio Visit

‘Tis the season for giving, right?  Well, I just got a nice gift from my friend Stacey Evans.  She introduced me to an artist website called The Studio Visit.  Now I get to re-gift it to you.

Started in 2008 as a virtual public access forum by Isabel Manalo, The Studio Visit (TSV) introduces professional artists at work in their studios speaking directly to their work through a dialogue with the writer. This intimate first-person view into artistic process cultivates familiarity and appreciation of the intellectual and technical processes of contemporary art making.

Bottom line: I have always been intrigued by the many ways an artist thinks.  Sometimes it's linear (like me), and sometimes it is terribly abstract.  Other times it cannot be defined.  Regardless, the best way to experience an artist work is to hear about it straight from the artist.  That's what makes, TSV such a gem...  It goes straight to the artist.  We don't have to read a curator's long winded description of the work.

I'm a little biased, but one of my favorite “visits” is with Virginia artist, Ashley Williams.  We had the good fortune to show some of Ashley's work at Migration while she was still an undergraduate at University of Virginia.  She has since moved to Colorado to get her MFA.

Read Ashley’s interview with Deborah McCleod here.  Learn more about Ashley’s hyperborean fauna and beasts.  See what stimulates her imagination.  In the video (below), we get a glimpse of the marginally real worlds Ashley has created in her imagination and the beasts that inhabit them.  No one can describe it better than the artist herself.

[Image:  Mother and Child, oil on mylar, 70"x92"]

Comments

[Maureen E. Doallas]

Thank you for this, Rob. I'm going to add the site to my log.

[Barbara Semonche]

Rob: Thank you for alerting your blog respondants about this website (TSV). It is impressive. The one you mentioned in your blog, Ashley Williams, I recall seeing her work in her studio at the Univ. of VA several years ago. I'm still very impressed with her work.
All the best,
B. Semonche