Flashback

Studio Needs (9.12.02)

This week in the studio has been about housekeeping and when you move things that haven't been moved in months or years, you find things that you'd long forgotten about, like this list (above) that I found on Wednesday afternoon. It's from September of 2002 and was written a couple of months before I moved to my current space. In the lower right corner, you can see that I was ready to have a new space. 

The one I had at the time at 315 North 12th Street, just north of Vine Street, was coming apart at the seams, as was the whole building. Whoever owned the building that month wasn't going to let maintenance get in the way of a perceived good investment. It was a solid old twelve floor warehouse that housed a couple of whole-floor sweatshops, as well as artist, photography and fashion studios.  I say "that month" because in the time that I was there, about 5 years or so, there was a steady owner (based in New York), but suddenly, in the last year that I was there, the ownership changed at least three times and the last owner was obviously trying to get in on trying to convert the building into condo lofts. 

The strategy was to let the building fall to pieces, forcing everyone to move out and it worked. They had one maintenance man for the entire building and he couldn't keep up with all of the repairs that the place needed. The last straw for me was when a leak, not a small one, from the roof came through to my studio and nothing was done about it for too long. 

I finally started a search for a new space and found the one that I've been in for the past ten years. Nothing lasts forever, but I've been making sure to make the most of what I have before it's time to move on.