Virtual Studio Tours -- Dayna J. Collins

Welcome to my creative space: Alley Art Studio!

1. What sort of artwork do you do and what are you currently working on?

I do a smattering of a lot of things. I love to paint and I do so in visual journals, with wax, and on canvases of all sizes. I love using texture with my paintings, including collage elements, but my favorite medium is using plaster, which can be stained, sanded, painted, carved into, and reworked again and again. I also work with metal and found objects, creating my Funky Junkyard Birds, which are made from recycled tins and metal bits. I have also developed Curious Elements, which are made from recycled wood that is textured and painted, and then I add crazy metal bits and pieces. Curious Elements satisfy my urge to use plaster, paint, and also gives me an excuse to go junking for found objects.

When I'm working on a batch of Curious Elements, I set up three big tables in the living room of the studio and create stations for the various processes involved in creating them.


I also love inviting friends over for visual journaling groups or special projects (like painting clown shoes), so the large tables are used in a different way.


My plan for the new year is to work big, so I've converted my living room into an area for working on large wood panels and canvases . This is a portion of a plaster piece I created last year.


2. How do you need your studio to function?

I need lots of space because I work on multiple projects at one time. I sometimes have the workbench in the kitchen covered with a new batch of boards to be plastered and painted, while a table in another room might be covered with metal bits and pieces to be used in various projects. A side counter is almost always reserved for one of my visual journals so I can easily add a collage element or get rid of leftover paint on my brush. Here's a few photos of my kitchen work space looking pretty darn neat and tidy!




I even funked up my bathroom, although the doll on the back of the toilet does freak some people out!


3. What do you love about your studio?

I love that I have an entire house! Formerly a little one-bedroom rental, about three years ago my husband suggested I take it over as my studio (I was sort of encroaching on our living space at home, also a small living space). So we painted every inch, added shelves and storage units, and converted the house into Alley Art Studio (a name developed when we used to live in a house on an alley). The best part of my studio? It’s on an alley and right across the street from a park.


(And it also have a pretty cool fenced in back yard where I do art in the summer).


4. What would you like to change about it?

I wish I had a bigger area to do large paintings – and a floor that I didn’t care about! Otherwise, it is perfect. When I'm wanting to work big, I just throw down a big painter's tarp. Here's the living room sans tarp and then with tarp and ready for some paint to get flung.



5. What would your dream studio contain?

I think I have my dream studio.


6. Do you have any organizational tips?

I’m a big organizer and I work best when I have a general idea of where things are. Probably the best tip is using glass jars to store bits and bobs – you can see what’s inside and they look pretty cool all lined up and stacked on a shelf (or shelves as the case may be). I also love using a metal crib mattress springs for displaying photos and odd objects. Here are some examples of my organization -- jars and cubbies in a hall, metal crib springs, and the back bedroom used for general storage.




You can see my art and follow my art wanderings at my blog:
Alley Art Studio

A couple of fun studio facts:

My studio was featured in Fall 2010 issue of Cloth Paper Scissors Studios.

I was on the Artists in Action Studio Tour in September, 2011

I'll leave you with a few studio vignettes:

Happy Valentine's Day!

Every year we do a little Valentine's swap at our Feb. meeting. This is the one I made this year.

This was inspired by Jude's cloth weavings, using some of my hand-painted fabrics for a bit of a graphic touch and both machine and hand stitching. I copied some of my painted fabrics on paper and used it for the background.

Happy Valentines Day!

The 100 Artists Show: The Art of Communication

Four PAC members are participating in the 100 Artists Show at the Mary Lou Zeek Gallery in Salem, The Art of Communication. The members are Tory, Steph, Melissa, and Dayna.

Mary Lou's website offers a complete description about the show, but here is brief explanation:

During the month of February, the Mary Lou Zeek Gallery will be presenting “The Art of Communication”, the 10th annual 100 Artists show. Participating artists received a blank letter through the mail and were asked to write a thought, a story, or whatever they so choose and then send to their “partnered” artist. The artists had over three months to transform the writings into their work of art.









A pre opening dinner at a local French restaurant, Napoleon's, with all four participating PAC members: Dayna, Steph, Tory, and Melissa.


The opening reception was Wednesday evening.




Check out Mary Lou's website for photos of the over 100 pieces of art donated for the auction. You can place your bid in person or by calling the gallery.

Dark River of Stars

I’ve been working on a book collaboration with Paulann Petersen, Oregon’s poet laureate, and Barbara Mason, printmaker. It’s been a busy several months for me, making models and investigating different materials and structures. But we have finally finished the design work and are in "production".

Dark River of Stars is a collection of Valentine’s poems Paulann sent to friends over the past nine years. Every page, as well as the cover and box, is hand printed using Solar plates and every book is hand bound. It is being published in a limited edition of 50.

The book is launching with an exhibit in February at 23 Sandy Gallery. The opening reception is this Friday (the 3rd) and we’ll have a launch reception, with a poetry reading by Paulann and a bit about the book’s development by Barbara and me, on Saturday February 11th at 4 p.m.

You can see more of the book at my website or 23 Sandy Gallery’s. Hope to see you at the receptions.

Happiness Feeds Creativity

Can we say that The Myth of the Tortured Genius has outlived its day?  Wikipedia has an article about Tortured Artists and their stories are well known. From Van Gogh to Janis Joplin we admire their creations but feel sad for their process.

“It’s completely a myth,” says Tom Wilbeck, Associate Dean of Student Affairs at The Art Institute of Houston. “Clinically speaking, there’s really no evidence that most accomplished artists are mentally unstable or have come from an unstable background.”

I suppose the Myth of the Happy Genius just isn’t as fascinating.

Photo by mrfitz

 Teresa Amabile, Director of Research at Harvard Business School, and her colleagues have good news for all you reasonably content, untortured creative people.  Happiness does more for innovation than does melancholy and ennui.

In an Administrative Quarterly article they describe research performed by tracking electronic diary entries of employees for 5 months.  Amabile found that “positive feelings–joy, love-are positively related to creativity, and negative emotions-anger, fear, sadness–are negatively related to day-to-day creativity”.  Even better, good moods can increase the flow of creativity for up to three days.

Is anyone surprised?

These and more findings are in Amabile’s latest book The Progress Principle which I’ve admired earlier.

So, do what makes you happy (making art?) and you'll be more creative.  Sounds like a virtuous cycle to me!

A water color workshop I'd signed up for motivated me to start painting more. So while Christmas shopping, the Audubon calendar inspired me to paint a bird a day to prepare to take the workshop.  So here are a few examples from my watercolor sketch book.  I'm using the Strathmore Visual Journal book.  I've been reading a book by Carl Purcell called "Your Artist's Brain" . . . neuroscience meets artist.  This book is unlocked something for me.  He explains how to "see" in a way that I finally understand.  Drawing has gotten easier  . . .watercolor is another story.  I find acrylic much easier than watercolor.  But there is something so lively and engaging about watercolor.  It's a dance with the water and pigment.  It makes me do what it wants, not the other way around.

winter warmth

It's a great time to whip up some quilts and other things to keep you warm and cozy over these winter months. In keeping with my own intentions to make quilts this year, I just finished this one to keep on the couch at home. The narrow vertical strips are made of linen scraps; they seem to go well with the colorful print and batik pieces.

This is the first time I've done a pieced back, which really adds a lot of interest to a quilt.

If you're not a quilter, there are other ways to create wonderful coverlets. Around the holidays, I picked up some wool yardage at the Pendleton Woolen Mill in Portland and made 2 blankets for my big kids. If you live in the area, the store is a great place to find the famous woolen goods, some at bargain prices. They also sell beautiful felt binding by the yard, and will give you nifty Pendleton labels to sew into your projects.

Virtual Studio Tours--Robin Olsen

We are beginning a new feature this month. Each month one of us will post pictures of our studios and discuss how they function for us.

I'm getting started with the first virtual tour.

Name: Robin Olsen

1. What sort of artwork do you do? What are you currently working on?

I work primarily in fabric or paint. Currently I have several paintings going and have been handpainting lots of black and white fabric to use it a larger, graffiti-inspired fabric piece.

2. How does your studio need to function? Give a brief description of your working space.

I need an area where I can stand and paint on fairly large canvases. I also need a separate sewing/cutting area for fiber work. I need lots of storage for fabric.

I have a large room in a daylight basement for my studio. I feel lucky to have a designated space like that. I keep my easel and painting materials on one side, and my sewing/cutting tables on the other. I have large cabinets for storing fabric behind closed doors. I have a design wall on one side for doing fabric work, and an inspiration board on another. My studio is functional rather than beautiful.

3. What do you love about your studio?

I love that I do have a space of my own, and no one in my family complains about the mess. I love the cork floors I put in because I do like to stand a lot. And I'm happy having room for two large tables that I can work on, in addition to a sewing table and a junk catching table.

4. What would you like to change about your studio?

I need better lighting and keep thinking I should hire an electrician to re-outfit the room. Since I work in so many different areas, I would like to have good lighting in each one. Right now I move a free-standing photographer's light around.

And ideally I'd have a large wet area with tall tables and a deep sink for dyeing fabrics.

5. What would your dream studio look like?

It's funny that the older I get the less I like visual clutter--although my current studio certainly doesn't reflect that! I think my dream studio would be a large white box with great natural light, and paint-splattered wood floors that I don't have to worry about. Plenty of table space and an area with a comfortable chair and shelves of art books. Very little in it. I'd love to have all my materials, except the ones I'm using, stored in a separate room. Oh yeah, and an ocean view!

Storage cabinets for fabric:

The mess behind the closed doors:

6. Do you have any organizational tips?

Clean up between major projects or when you spend more time looking for stuff than making something. I can spend all kinds of time organizing every last button in the perfect container, but as soon as I start working, it's all over.

Please join us on the third Friday of every month as we virtually tour more Portland Art Collective studios.

To see more of Robin's work, visit her blog.