Studio Visit- Sandy Wadlington

One of the favorite parts of my job is going on studio visits. Artists often bring their personal vision of beauty to their homes and studios. They accumulate interesting things, have beautiful gardens and collect marvelous art from all of their friends.



Their studios are full of things too. There are often postcards, newspaper clippings and pages ripped from books that have images that inspire them. There will also be incomplete sketches or the sorts of drawings and paintings that they might never sell. This is all fascinating to me- like an opportunity to see how they think.

I visited the home and studio of Sandy Wadlington this past week to see how her show in September is shaping up.

Sandy's studio is small and cozy. It is full of the art in process. As pieces near completion they are put up on the wall for her to assess as she works on other pieces.

I am amazed at how many pastel sticks she uses. As you can see there are boxes and boxes of them. She has also tacked up paper bags underneath her work are to catch any pastel dust that filters down as she works. Pastels have very little binder in them to make them hold together or even hold on to the paper. Therein lies their beauty- they are almost pure pigment, giving a finished pastel unsurpassed color.

Sandy has also been working on a number of charcoal drawings which have the same same beautiful, atmospheric effect she gets with pastel but minus the color. For me they have the soft quality of a lithograph.

The show is shaping up nicely and Sandy and I decided on the images for the postcard. We are both looking forward to the show in September.

The Glamourous World of Art

Mary McGowan always jokes about 99% of our job is schlepping art from here to there. This was definitely part of our day last week.

In anticipation of delivering a big job we moved 150 pieces from the bottom level where the frame shop is to the main floor. Brian, our framer, was glad to be able to have the room in his workspace again! Amanda packed the first car full for a delivery the next day after a quick call to confirm that the delivery was still on.

Throughout the day the amount of storage area available at the job site kept shrinking. Calls were made, hair was pulled, teeth were gnashed. Construction schedules had fallen behind and there was currently moving men installing all the furniture. By the end of the day it was clear that we would have very little storage area so only Amanda would be making her delivery.

Amanda showed up at the job site, but.... there was no place to put the artwork. So back she came... and the second round of schlepping began. Everything from Amanda's vehicle and the main gallery was moved down a level.

But we all kept our humors about it and worked out a system. Mary who is the master packer stayed downstairs and arranged things so that all of the frames were safe. Amanda and I did the running up and down the stairs. We made fast work of it and none of us needed to make an appointment with our chiropractors.