I’m still not feeling 100% so not up to doing another post about my lighting just yet. So as you wait, please check out my brilliant bead artist friend Julie’s brand new website (textile inspired jewelry from seed beads – it’s amazing).
Big congrats to Julie for being accepted into this year’s Cherry Creek Arts Festival in July. She’s going to be a hit.
This is what my backyard looked like this morning:
Nine hours later it looked like this:
I love spring in Colorado.
I was going to continue my posts about studio lighting today but have been home sick and sleeping most of they day. So hopefully tomorrow they will continue.
Markings #26 – In Progress
Textile Painting
©2009
~80" x 80" (unfinished)
I’ve decided to take a break from the new studio posts for tonight and show some new art instead, lest I forget I actually do make art also.
During the remodel I designed and constructed 5 new pieces for a curated show. The curators have selected the work so I can now show the ones they did not choose.
The above textile painting is in progress (it still needs the surface stitching/quilting – many many hours left to go).
This work was designed and constructed in a small 10′ by 12′ room that also doubled as my bedroom so I was never able to stand more than about 6 or 7 feet away from it. Makes for some tricky design work.
I posted a photo of the strips of fabric I used back in Janurary (these turn into the thin lines in the finished work). So now you can see what these turned into.
Happy weekend everyone!
The other posts in the Studio Lighting series:
Studio Lighting – Part I – Requirements & Why I went with Fluorescent
Studio Lighting – Part III – coming soon
Studio Lighting – Part IV – coming soon
Today’s post is a discussion of the installation of the indirect fluorescent lights I selected for whole studio lighting and how they are performing.
The fixtures I ordered (link to lights on the manufacturer’s website) had to be manufactured and it was an exciting day when the finally arrived at the studio. There are seven 8 foot long fixtures and one 4 foot long fixture (which was not installed) in this pile:
This is what the fixtures looked like before they were installed (the gold stuff is just plastic protecting the very shiny silver surface that helps reflect the light):
For those that followed my blog and construction photo journal know that the installation of these lights was not a smooth process.
They had to be sent back to the manufacturer after the first failed installation attempt to be rewired. Then I had to remove one of the lights cause it turned out they didn’t fit (due to end caps that they sort of forgot to tell me out). There were some cancellations by the electricians, a sketchy incident with them being locked out of the house but after 6 or 7 scheduled appointments they were finally installed.
During that time the lights sat piled up in my studio collecting dust:
Finally the electrician and Carl (the guy in charge of my project) got the lights installed. The lights are bolted together into long runs and then suspended from the ceiling on wires. It was a bit of a tricky job but they did an excellent job of hanging them straight:
This is what they look like installed – the light is bounced off the ceiling and throughout the entire room. I have them just a foot off the ceiling because I don’t want them to block the design walls so quite a bit of light pools on the ceiling. They would probably look a bit better hanging at 18″ down but for my application this is how I want them.
There are 3 runs of lights running the length of the studio, which is 27 feet long and 20 feet wide. Two of the runs are 16 feet long and the third is 24 ft long. The shorter runs are because I don’t need to light up the stairway area (floor plan).
Because energy efficiency was a concern I have the lights on 4 switches. The shorter runs each have their own switch and the longer run is broken into 2 switches. This way I can turn on only a few lights if I’m doing work in just one area of my studio.
I didn’t get to see these things in person so I had to guess how many runs of lights I would need. I went with 3 and it seems to be about perfect – one down the center and 2 closer to the walls. The runs are about 7 feet apart.
Each 4 foot section of light holds 3 T5 bulbs so with seven 8 foot fixtures that is 42 bulbs.
This seems to be about perfect. I have even light throughout the studio without any areas that feel to dark or too light.
The color of the light (5500K with a CRI of 91 – see part I for more info on the bulbs) is perfect for my needs. I can do color work day and night without a problem and it’s a really good light for photographing my artwork.
Basically these lights turned out to be exactly what I wanted. There was a lot of guess work involved but in the end it worked out well. If I built another studio I would install the same lights in pretty much the same configuration.
Several people have asked so figured I might as well just include this in the post. These lights aren’t cheap. I got the contractor’s discount on these fixtures and they were still $450 a piece, with tax it came to about $3500 for the fixtures. The bulbs were another $600 (I order 2 cases of 25 at $11.50 per bulb, plus shipping).
My artwork and I are so totally worth this investment.
When I first started designing my studio I knew good lighting was one of the most important features of the room. So I started by identifying my goals for my lighting solution:
1) Provide enough light at all times (day and night) to be able to do color work through out the studio – preferably without any harsh glare
2) Be as energy efficient as possible
3) Provide enough task lighting at my sewing machine and cutting tables to do that work
4) Provide gallery style lighting for open studio events
5) Provide lighting similar to regular home lighting to see how my art will look in those conditions
I considered hiring a lighting designer to help me but I didn’t plan far enough in advance.
So it was me and the internet in search of lighting solutions when we came down to the deadline (electricians on ladders asking where they should run wire).
Between websites, blogs and questions posted to large fiber artist mailing lists I was able to make a darn good guess at what I wanted. [thanks to everyone that generously shared their information - I am very grateful].
The first 2 posts will cover #1 and #2 (whole studio lighting) – the most important requirements. I’ll finish off talking about requirements #3-5. I suspect this is going to take at least 3 if not 4 posts due to my time and the amount of information I have to share.
I would have preferred some type of LED lighting solution for the full studio lighting because of requirement #2 but I couldn’t find anything that was suitable. There are some nice LED can lights that I learned about too late. I’m not sure they would have done the trick but they might have. I’d like to put these in my kitchen when I get the money (they are about $100 each and can be fit into regular can fixtures).
I would have also loved to go with some type of daylighting solution and put in a ton of solatubes for natural light during the day, but I would have needed a ton and at $650 each that was not in the budget. Especially since they only work during the day so it would have been an incomplete solution.
Incandescent lighting wasn’t going to fulfill the energy efficient requirement for the full studio lighting so I didn’t consider it.
So that left me with fluorescent.
I did a lot of reading and asking about types of fluorescent bulbs and fixtures googling numerous and various key words about lighting and studio and who knows what. I love google and the internet – there is nothing one can’t learn it seems.
Fixtures
To keep the glare down and provide a more even and softer light I went with indirect fixtures that bounce the light up and off the ceiling with only a very small percent of the light coming straight down into the room.
I’ll talk about the fixtures more in the next post when I post photos of them.
Bulb Type
Next up was a decision on type of bulb. The old big bulbs are T12. There are also T8s (smaller diameter) and T5s (the smallest) that are both more energy efficient. T12 were definitely out because they are significantly less efficient.
Not many people I talked to, including the folks at the lighting store, knew much T5 and T8 bulbs. The best information I could find was this article: T5 Fluorescent Systems. Somewhat technical but not too much so.
From this I decided to go with T5 bulbs. The 2 key deciding factors:
T5s are smaller and so they use less materials = more green. [Reference]
T5s are supposed to maintain their light output over their lifetime better than T8s and T12s. [Reference]. That means consistent light in my studio for the entire 20,000 hour lifetime of the bulbs.
The need for higher heat was a concern but I think that neither T8s or T5 were going to be at their optimal temperature for the indirect fixtures I wanted (T8s too hot and T5 too cold) and somewhere in the middle they meet and figured they were both close to optimal but not quite there – so that was a wash.
I knew the T5s would be more expensive being newer but they were also likely to provide more light as I could put 3 of them in a 4 foot length of fixture vs just 2 of the T8s. So again a plus for the T5s.
It was a bit of a gamble as I couldn’t find any place to see these in person (the lighting store only had T12 indirects installed). Just had to cross my fingers and hope for the best.
The Bulbs – Color Temperature and CRI
The lighting store didn’t have high quality T5 bulbs so again I turned to the internet to find what I wanted. I was after something very close to daylight and with a very high CRI (color rendering index).
And exhaustive (or maybe just exhausting) search came up with these as my best option: T5 5500K 91 CRI bulbs. Very close to daylight with a high CRI.
So that’s the technical stuff and the decisions I made on what to order. Tomorrow I’ll show what it looks like with photos and talk about how well it’s working.
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Studio Floor Plan
I included the floor plan again and marked some key landmarks to identify where these photos were taken.
This is facing the north wall. I still need to build the design walls for this wall. The green thing in the foreground is 4′x8′ table that I will use for cutting fabric.
My current work in progress tends to end up with parts piled up on top of my cutting table and now with a larger table I have even more room to spread it out (I tend to work on more than 1 quilt at a time so this will be very nice).
This is the east wall, and longest, wall of the studio. There is a 11′ long design wall in between the windows where I anticipate composing my smaller textile paintings.
The cutting table is visible again (and in almost every photo). It’s built on top of 4 sets of shelves. The one showing in this view holds some of my artbooks and magazines.
The south wall (yay – a southern window – I didn’t have any in my old house and this is the only one in this house as you can see the cats are equally thrilled with the southern exposure).
The bins to the right of the cutting table are from the container store and hold my hand-dyed fabric and artworks in progress.
The set of drawers under the cutting table is full of my old commercial cotton fabrics that I don’t use but am not sure what to do with as of yet. Might sell them all as I’ve got 3 of these dressers full of fabric I don’t use anymore.
The west wall. I’ll use this wall as my main design wall for my larger work and as my photography wall. I photographed some artwork on it this morning and it turned out great. I couldn’t photograph in my old studio because it was too dark so this is a treat.
This is taken standing in the north-western corner and shows pretty much the entire studio from this angle.
The sewing table to the far left is the table I’ll use for constructing my compositions for the textile paintings. I have separate work areas for this type of design work and the more meditative process of quilting the quilts.
I’ve always wanted this but have never been able to pull it off. Now I can have work in progress at different stages and suspect it will increase my productivity even more. Less down time when switching between the type of work I’m doing.
This taken standing in the south-eastern corner and shows the studio from this angle.
Three of the drawers under the cutting table can be seen. The one facing me is full of beads and buttons (also rarely used). The other 2 shelves hold tools and supplies that I tend to need frequently when creating my textile paintings.
One of my requirements was a large open floor space as this is where I baste my quilts. I moved my cat over here to show scale. She was happy to help.
This is the table that they built into the space at the top of the stairs that cantilevers over the backyard area.
It’s 4 feet by 7+ feet and is the table I will use to quilt my quilts. The dressers to the right contains more thread (2 of the drawers) and tools needed while sewing. The other dressers contain yarns and more fabrics I don’t use.
This is the door to the studio closet that happily appeared in the plans I talked about in yesterday’s post.
The closet is over the top of the laundry room so the floor is about 3 feet higher than the floor of the studio. For a long time the door to the studio was in the stairway but it looked funny as it was high up on the wall, so it got moved around the corner.
I have to walk on this table (built for walking on) to get into the closet. Works great to pile everything up on the table then move it into or out of the closet.
The stairway to the rest of the house. Very open and well integrated.
The view from the kitchen/living room. Everything past the yellow wall (the old back wall of the house) was added on during the remodel. Underneath my studio is my new office and new bedroom. The laundry is to the right of the studio at the same level as the kitchen.
Lots of art here in the kitchen – the pears were painted by an artist in New Zealand and I bought it at an art coop somewhere on the north island in 2001. The small landscape on the right side of the stairway is by Tracy Helgeson (love love her work).
The ceramic plate on the wall on the left is some famous something but I got it at a garage sale for $3. The dandelion painting below it is by Shan Byran Hanson a super talented Wisconsin painter.
The ceramic plate on the counter (which you can barely see) is by Cynthia Guajardo and is surrounded by small bowls by a colleague of Cynthia’s at the Colorado Potter’s Guild.
The textile painting in the stairway on the left is Structures #60 and the one on the right at the top of the stairs is Structures #12. When the art buying money tanks are refilled I plan on buying a painting to go on the wall over the stairs into the office. It might take a few years but I have a pretty good idea of what I want to go there.
Yay!!
That’s the what comes to mind. I absolutely love my new studio and the rest of the house that comes with it.
Tomorrow I’ll start writing about lighting. (If you look at these photos again you will see the indirect fluorescent lighting I’ve put in along with some track lighting.)
Original Studio Floor Plan
Above are the correct original floor plans – there was a small bump-out to the right of the top of the stairs to the studio that was missing from my last post about the floor plan last week. This area was designed to be about 9 feet long. My original plan was to put a table in that space as shown by the big green rectangle.
Not long after they poured the foundation walls for my house it became obvious to me that what was being built didn’t match the floor plan. Two significant things happened that were going to mess up my plans for how I was going to use the space in my studio (most notably putting the table right at the top of the stairs).
The first change was they didn’t dig the bedroom/office area as deep as planned (they could only dig as deep as the old crawl space). This meant that instead of a split level out the back of my house where I would have an equal number of stairs going down and up it would be uneven.
There are only 5 steps going down into the bedroom but 10 going up to the studio. So that meant less space at the top of the stairs in the studio. So that table would have blocked the stairs.
They also built the garage longer than planned by a few feet (being guys they do things like this – add any additional space to the garage assuming everyone wants a big garage). The result of this was the 9 foot southern wall I thought I had – it suddenly became closer to 7 feet – no way my 8 foot long table would fit.
As they were building I kept thinking "that wall does not look 9′ long" so finally measured it one day. The placement of the 4′x8′ table at the top of the stairs was key for fitting in 2 sewing tables and still having enough floor space to not feel cramped.
So it was time for a chat with the builders, who were really great to work with so I knew we’d come up with a solution.
They said they thought I’d be happy to have more garage space. They are guys. Please – who cares about the garage?
After some pondering (repouring the foundation was not an option) the solution we came up with was to cantilever the studio further out to make the little bump-out 4 feet deep and they would build me a table that fit snuggly into that area.
So table at top of stairs and everything is good again.
The cantilever from outside:
As a result of this change two really cool things happened. First was the closet that was supposed to be in the laundry room got pushed into the garage because the door had to move over because of the cantelier. The only place to put that closet was into the garage (still accessible from the house but taking up floor space from the garage).
Result – my laundry room was much bigger (and ironically the garage was smaller, which definitely saddened the builders). I will easily be able to set up a table in the laundry room to dye fabric. An unexpected and very awesome benefit. I was thinking I would have to dye fabric outside or in the garage.
But what’s even better is that as I watched them build I keep noticing the space to the right of the stairs and over the laundry room. What was going to happen to that? Originally that space would have been part of the attic but with the cantilever it was suddenly a 4 foot wide space that looked exactly like a closet to me.
A closet in my studio. Something I had tried to design in and finally gave up opting to have them build a basement under the laundry room to store my art stuff. Wow – I was thrilled – a huge closet for my art (and with bonus access to the attic over the old house for more storage).
So this is what actually got built:
This is how the entire remodel project went – something would seem like a problem but the result would invariably be better than the original plan. In hind sight it would have been a mistake to build the studio without a closet in the studio so I suspect the universe was just looking out for me on this one.
Tomorrow I’ll post real pictures of all of this to compare to the floor plan. Then I promise – I’ll get to the lighting, cause my lighting, it’s awesome!
Structures #83
Textile Painting
©2007
12"x12"
I’ll be emailing my first studio newsletter for 2009 in the next few days. I planned on gifting Structures #83 to a subscriber in the December newsletter but the winner never contacted me. I got busy with construction and didn’t draw a new winners name so decided to do it in the next newsletter, which will be this one.
So again I will select one of my subscribers to receive Structures #83 as it seems like a festive joyful thing to share my work this way. So if you’d like a chance to win a piece of my artwork please sign up below.
You can check out a sample Studio Newsletter here: Lisa Call Studio News if you’d like an idea of what you are signing up for.
Sign up here:
And of course, I will never share or sell your email address and will only use it for sending my newsletters. All emails sent will include a link to unsubscribe should you decide you are no longer interested.
[Winner of the artwork will have 1 week to contact me if I don't hear from them I will draw another name.]
Markings #12
Textile Painting
©2006
44" x 32"
$7500
This morning I finished installing all the art on my walls in my house. Markings #12 was the last piece to go up and it will be the only textile paining hung permanently in the studio.
Although permanent isn’t really the right word. This piece was on hold for a buyer for a long time and that sale fell through. I suspect it won’t be too long before it finds a new owner now that it is back on the market. Hands down this is one of my favorites.
Here’s how it looks from the rest of the house:
As seen from the kitchen
Looks way better on that wall than a door doesn’t it? The builders ended up moving that door for me for free. They are the best. If you need a contractor here in Denver let me know and I’ll get you their contact info. I’m working on updating their website, then I’ll post a link to it.
View of Markings #12 from the Studio
I love how this wall looks as seen from the rest of the studio. Definitely inspires me to want to make more art.
As you can see the studio is still a mess. So that’s the plan for today. I think I can get most of this cleaned up by lunch now that I’ve sorted through everything.
Then it’s time to put up my design walls. The styrofoam is ready and waiting:
Organizing the Studio
The above photos are the current state of my studio.
When I moved everything into the house I crammed all of this and more into my studio closet:
Now it’s time to clear it out and keep only the essentials.
I cleaned out some stuff before I moved but I had a bunch of the guilty thoughts like "I really need to finish this – I started it" so I kept way too much. I also recall packing my studio was done in a rush. Much of it done the morning the movers were coming. Not the best time for clear thought.
So now I have the time and I’m sorting out 90% and more. Projects that might be nearly done but that are seriously ugly – gone. Projects that I was going to make for a friend or family member but the event passed years ago – gone. Projects I should finish because I started – gone.
Most of this stuff is 10-15 years old. I’ve kept this stuff around because it’s not bad and aren’t we required to finish everything we start? But you know what. I don’t need that rule anymore.
By getting rid of this stuff I am creating space for new things in my life. I won’t miss any of it and I’m going to love not having it draining my energy as it sits there making me feel guilty.
I have a vision in my head of a very simple and uncluttered home and studio. Where I am surrounded only by things I love and there is nothing negative making me feel bad or guilty. I’m so close to reaching that goal – the energy in my house is incredible.
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