Rusty!

Russ McClintock brought a little Miami flava to the joint last week. He's a good buddy from Chicago who fixed up a photo studio there and spent a week helping out while waiting for his visa to relocate to London. He's an incredible photographer, there are some images of the space on his blog .

Taking down florescents

Russell and I took down the florescents and said good riddance. What an unbelievable difference.

New Kitchen/New Lease

The deep clean worked its way up onto the kitchen stage, made myself a fabulous lunch to go with the new lease under "Softbox LLC." I stopped by NY Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts to get my membership and make an appointment to start the process. My Suzie Secretary alter ego is twitching in anticipation

Is it spring cleaning if it is June?

Been doing more scrubbing and mopping, half the space is open again. I built a "test pod" to practice living in 8' x 12'. It is more spacious than I thought, or maybe I've just been conditioned to New York City standards of personal space.




I also built a new temporary window for the skyline side, which is much better for the elements and can be taken off when AC becomes necessary.

Spring Clean!

Did the spring cleaning last night, got a bit carried away. Even the plants got a new clean home.
Took these dreamy pics of the vespa and column with Photobooth

Studio Rat

I've been super busy at school this month, up for mid-program review so softbox construction got put on hold until May. I'm still dreaming of her though, you can see by the pod-models.


Softbox pipe dreams translated into site specific piece for my review.

Momo's green

Check out my project inspired by looking for greenspace for Momo, my neighbor's pup, around Softbox.

Softbox model

Andrea's Party

New floor done!

Andrea is a paint rolling maniac. Floor is finally done. Party pics soon.

Sunburst over Sunnyside

Gorgeous coming home on the 7 the other day, had to hustle up to the roof for these.

Final pod design

Got the pod design truly nailed down (har har) and even made a nerdy excel spreadsheet to estimate costs. Looks like they'll be $400 each, which doesn't account for some free supplies we already have and any other stuff we may be able to scavenge on craig's list + the like.

Stage, part deux

OK, so Bamboo would be fabulous, but maybe a little out of our "start up" budget. I had the idea to floor the stage with boards from woden pallettes left on our loading dock. Since they did a big cleanout today, I was able to harvest a bunch.


Not sure about the patern yet, I love the idea of a rough edge. I have a feeling it'll be pretty "mosaic-ey" when dealing with the real rough wood.

Stage construction (or "Tilman is my Hero")

We finally got the stage constructed from the lumber I bought from Hope Hilton . She made an amazing "front porch" installation for her MFA show, and of course spared no expense. It was great to get to reuse wood with from a project with such good mojo, which was (not to mention) essentially the exact same size.

Tilman rocked my world. Did not stop til the job was done. Fantastic.

Floor

After Agonizing over how to finish the floors (financially and conceptually), we decided on a white wash. This was the brainchild of Justin, a welcome alternative to my possibly ill-advised idea of a red floor. We had a lot of conflicted emotions about painting it, covering the wood (as crappy and water damaged as it was), but...


...after 1st coat of primer we were in love. Glossy gorgeousness and mostly of all, sealed and CLEAN.

The new white floor is paradise, or half paradise until we move all our possessions on top of it and do the other side.

The Master Plan

Everything is so clean in a 3D model. Sigh. We've written a bit about the spatial plan in other posts, here are some images of what we are hoping to build.





The rooms, or "pods" will be on wheels, making for maximum floor plan flexibility. The walls will be made of independent 4' x 8' panels, wood or metal studs, stretched with transluscent white plastic like little softboxes. They are designed modularly so that they can be joined together or used as open space for exhibitions and projects by removing panels. Design and materials aren't set in stone yet, but hopefully will be soon.




The stage will double as the kitchen on a regular basis, with curtains installed to hide kitchen furniture during performances. The whole stage will also be moveable, in case the leaky pipe of death acts up again.