For the last 12 months, I have spent my time working from an art studio that I had been renting from a community driven company in Liverpool, England. I won’t derive any specific names here, the things I say may not be gleaming and I’m a bit too cynical where I may write libel. This is not a universal experience however, I can guarantee other studios may be better and other people more optimistic, this is just one persons account.
This was my first studio, and prior to this I had only my space at home to work from. I decided a studio would launch my career further than it had been before, offering opportunities and connections that I wouldn’t otherwise get.
The studio I chose was the only one within travel distance from me, I don’t drive so it had to be within walking or cycling distance from where I live. I wasn’t dissuaded by the lack of options though, this one promised a lot. It offered a free utility room with all the tools and machines you could ever need, saws, 3d printers, laser cutters, soldering irons, files, tweezers, screwdrivers, etc, etc… A big workshop room with vices and spare wood for all your manufacturing needs, A shop front to sell your wares on the high street, and shared community spaces to hang out with people around you. They also boasted of opportunities that would be sent through to residents and jobs procured through the parent company that would be passed down to us through the ‘skill share’ program.
The actual studio space I paid for was quite small, probably 10ft x 7ft, (which is a really rough guess) of which would be shared by two people, so I only got a usable 5ft x 7ft. I could just about fit two desks in there and space for me to sit, and of course that meant my artwork had to be stored on the walls or under the desks, which is space that quickly ran out. The walls were painted a bleaching white which always messed with my eyes and were only about 5ft tall, meaning some people could peer over into your space as they walked past. As someone who favours privacy while they work, this was less than Ideal. These places were called ‘pods’, and resembled office cubicles. Each month I occupied one of these spaces it cost me £110, which inflated to £120 last April due to inflation. This is a lot of money for a self employed artist, and an impossible amount if I was not in part supported by the government through their self employment scheme. A lot of people who saw my studio (who weren’t fellow renters) were shocked at the size compared to the price, to a point where I had to justify it with the other utilities.
The issue is, I very rarely, if ever, used anything more than a saw or screwdriver. These extra utility rooms were completely useless to me. Other people used the 3d printer, or the laser cutter, but as an oil painter, these things were useless to me. I did plan on using the workshop space to make frames which is another thing I never did, meaning that too was useless to me. That’s on me, though an alternative wasn’t really available. That did still mean that I was paying £120 for a small box half the size of most peoples ‘box’ rooms in their home.
I must now talk about the shopfront, which is something that will always occupy my attention when speaking of the studio. The shop front was advertised as a place you could sell your art and wares, and was a convenient and novel thing for a studio to have. It was, however, technically at the behest of a lady who actually rented it as her own plant shop. At the first hurdle, it sucked. The branding on the front was god awful, most people who walked in including myself wasn’t aware of what it was, and assumed it was some kind of construction or investment opportunity (you know those empty lots that say ‘invest now!’ with a phone number). The branding was something nobody could change, for it advertised the parent company and they refused to do anything about it regardless of how many people told them it sucked.
Trigger warning: mentions of abuse, SA, harassment
The plant shop also left a lot to be desired, walking in it looked like a misfit of rag and tat with some plants about without any real designated place or price tag. There was a reason for this. The lady who ran the front was not in good mental health. She smoked weed while working, drank excessively, and mixed it all with prescription medication. I don’t say this to demean her, she wasn’t well. And she needed more than anything professional help and attention, and in England the services for such things are not great. She would often complain of her husband abusing her and create stories that were fanatical, it was impossible to know what was true and what wasn’t. I did not know any of this moving in. I thought she was just a whimsical character.
She would shout and be rude to customers, speak about incredibly inappropriate topics right next to them, and did everything which in any other job would get you fired. She acted like a child, but was in the middle of her life. I became somewhat acquainted with her before I knew much of her life, I would greet her coming in, and talk to her when without anything else to do. Apart from the occasional group celebration, that was the extent of our friendship.
Until one day she began to be inappropriate towards me, making sexualised jokes, entering my personal space (pod) to harass me while I work, getting a little too physical, and eventually making a comment that was very grotesque and caused me to finally report her. I wont mention the comment here, It’s a bit too inappropriate for the medium and contains some very sharp language.
Turns out this wasn’t the first time. This lady in question had committed various acts of harassment both usual and sexual in the past, and although reports were submitted, nothing had been done. I made a report for the sole purpose to get rid of her, I had no interest in staying around if she wasn’t going to be kicked out. But alas, after a week or so of corporate chatter, they finally came to the decision to kick her out once and for all. The consequence being that the shop that was promised to us as a perk of the studio was now closed for a few months as to ‘not seem disrespectful’. Hell no. More punishment to go with my harassment.
TW over
The shop eventually turned into the community driven place it was meant to be, but steadily I saw AI art appear being sold as prints right next to mine, and it devolved into a trinket shop, with resin pyramids and other landfill slop. Not everybody’s stuff was bad, but the whole vibe did give cheap. Eventually a charge was incurred where you’d have to pay £10 a month to host your items. I withdrew mine after not selling anything the first few months. The parent company decided they wanted 10% off of the top of the already 17% taken from every sale, which they had not done before. Cool. The 17% was to pay volunteers and cover admin costs, which is fair enough, but 27% is more than I pay than at an actual gallery.
The community itself was about as fine as any group of people who don’t know each other could be. They were all fine to talk to and were decent enough people just doing their best, but I feel that creative communities tend to attract a toxically positive aura. That kind of ‘think positive thoughts and nothing else’ which is entirely unhelpful and disregards the necessary balance I like with my work, and made me feel very unserious about something I couldn’t be more serious about. There were a fair group of them I liked hanging out with, I even did work for some of them, and there are people I’ll miss and some I even keep contact with. But broadly as more people moved in it felt as if I shared a space with a bunch of strangers, and none of whom shared my craft.
As much as there were a couple of painters in the studio, in terms of oil painting and traditional work I was pretty much on my own. There was no opportunity to find that brotherly group of fellow impressionists, and nobody who seemed excitable and driven to pursue huge things, and nobody to paint with by the lake. I get it, but also I wish there was more opportunity to fall into something like that (not the studio’s fault).
The parent company also promised us opportunities. Work! as an Artist! The rarest thing of them all! There were two types of work. The first is the skill share, you tell them what you can do, when someone commissions the parent company they pass it on to us. I never heard anything back from this and it appeared the only people who did were those who painted murals. I don’t paint murals. The second one was the opportunities that were sent through the Whatsapp group by the dedicated social media manager, this was a glorified scroll through instagram because all the links sent were just instagram posts for artist calls in the area, and most exhibits I went to apply for costed money or were inconvenient to travel to. It was a waste of my time. The studio brought me no money in the time I spent there, all the money I made was a result of my own work and connections prior to even joining.
All of this compounded meant that I was going broke at the end of each month for a studio I began to hate and served me no purpose. There are other smaller scummy things I resent the studio for that I won’t mention here for fear of rambling and this is absolutely a very personal account of my cynical time in a place I didn’t like (which may come across as insignificant to some) but I needed to get that off my chest.
This is in no way an essay to stop you from getting a studio, I would love to have one again in the future, but I think I will shop around a little first to find something more to my taste, If i ever decide to move out of the sweet home studio I got going on right now.
This was also kind of a wild post to write, considering I had to give a warning half way through. I hope you, who reads this, enjoyed it.
Nathiola.
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