A Room With a View

My  little gallery/studio room is finished, at least as much as anything is ever finished in my life.  Life is all about change, additions and subtractions, making things do and making them comfortable.  Sometime this Spring I will add a window or at least replace the door to the back with one that has a openable window.

 Three big blueberry plants outside the front entry.

The ventilation would be nice and I would have more natural lighting.  The main door has a window in it that looks towards the garden and my little plunge pool so I do have a view.

   I like my new room.  The floor (thank you SoozeeQ!) came out great, colorful, hodgepodge, historical and very much "me".  Two coats of "wet-look lacquer" will keep it nice and easy to clean.  More spilled paint will just make it even better.

 The room is waiting for me.

   Mostly it is warm and I love that!  Oregon has cold, rainy winters and it is freezing now.  I have begun the process of moving in, sorting this and that, finding places for things.

 <><>

<>

<><>

 Soozee's Floor!

 It is my "shop side", the other side of this wall where I can make money and do the metal art I know how to do.  I have no fantacies about creating an income from this gallery side but it will be warm and inviting and offer me another opportunity to try something different.  It will also offer an enticing place to seduce customers!  I will find some metal art to put in this room.
I think my photos are getting screwed up so I will stop for today!  The last one which will probably appear HUGE here but I have lost it is one of my office door, the back door and the door to my "junk room" that I haven't entered yet! yipes!

You can always find me HERE

Walls Tell No Tales

 Two coats, "Wet-Look Lacquer

...and Floors Leave Every Single Step.  The walls in a gallery studio need to be plain and simple, a soft white that offers no competition.  I have worked in a lot of bars and fancy night club restaurants and those ceilings are almost always a flat black, blending a mechanical background into nothingness.
We watch where we step giving floors a significant meaning to a room, like a foundation on which everything is built.
   I left the scars, the old paint, the spilled grout, its colorful history and after a proper cleaning applied the two coats of lacquer finish.  I like it.  It will be easy to clean, has a lot of memory and a feel of "do what you want", you can't hurt me!

 View from my office door

This is my clean room compared to the shop half on the other side of this wall but it is still a space for an artist.  It will get dirty.

   I have begun to hang things on the walls, mostly blank steel-framed canvasses as an encouragement for me to do something.  I want a lot of open room on the floor so there will not be much permanent furniture there, mostly stuff displayed, benches and tables that are for sale.

 Sink Counter top

   My easels and painting stations are still stuffed into my office and are eager to get out, wanting to call this room home.  Soon enough the floor will be really dry and there will be a lot of organizing to do, places to put paints and the over 200 brushes that I found at a garage sale.  I still haven't plumbed the sink.  Much to do!

    The sink counter top is brand new concrete and has no history. no browns, no rust, no scars of past abuse and this is a photo of what the green stain looks like on such a virgin area.
I like it but it is missing the character found in the floor.

I get to work for a few days on my "trip bar" for the deer fence but soon I will post the completed gallery photos.

You can always find me HERE

The Gallery Floor

   I have agonized over the gallery floor since I first thought of this project.  Well, I don't actually agonize over much but I have been thinking about it.  My shop on the other side of the gallery wall is a shop and looks like a shop and I am okay with that.  I want the gallery to be nice, clean, clear, warm, inviting, interesting.
For the longest time I was wanting a wooden floor.  My house has all wooden floors, no carpets anywhere except for the occasional throw rug.  They are really Persian Carpets made by the little hands of child labor but I didn't buy them.  They belonged to my mother.  Wooden floors are warm, easy to clean and I like the sound as feet walk on them.

 20 years of History on the floor

   Three things held me back.  1st, wooden floors would have cost me about $600 and I am pretty cheap, I admit that.  The second obstacle is me.  I am just dirty and I admit that too.  I can't imagine me in a clean white smock doing anything.  Paint will happen and I will drop it, I know.  The third is Soozee who suggested concrete stain and a lacquer finish.  So I got to thinking about that.

   I originally built this shop in 1991 as a wood shop.  It was full of planers and sanders and I was making cabinets and furniture and playing with wood stains.

 floor sections for sale, plus
shipping and handling fees.

About 1995 I invented "Stone Posts" and made them in the shop when the weather was cold and rainy. This was the introduction of cements and colored grouting to my concrete floor.  I had a big floor scraper I used to get the big chunks off but the evidence is there, a little always remains.  Then I discovered welding and filled my shop with grinders and cutters and the welder.  This puts a rust patina of fine steel particles deep into the pours of the concrete slab.

I could have scrapped and grounded and sanded this history off and begun this project with a clean slate, sort of speak.  But I didn't.  I bought some greenish acid etching stuff and mopped the floor with it, spilling it a little heavier here and there and adding the necessary drops to make me feel like Jason Pollack reincarnate.
He might have been crazy but he sure had fun!  The real colors won't appear until the floor is lacquered.
That will take some time.  I have to mop the floor about seven times and a couple times with amonia in order to neutralize the acid in the etching process.  The floor needs to be Ph neutral before you can apply the lacquer finish and this will take a couple days and then it has to dry, of course.  Maybe this weekend I can get the finish coat on it.
   It will be "Art History" for sure.  I will remember every stain, each blemish and every drop of blood.  I am sure my DNA is inextricably mixed into this new floor.  Maybe by Christmas I will be painting and add more history to this floor I walk on.

My  Official website is HERE