Find out what artists listen to while they work:
Studio Playlist 2021 #21: Ellen Rodenberg
http://www.ellenrodenberg.nl
Mike Cooper – Rayon Hula
Laurie Anderson – United States
Laurie Anderson – Big Science
Billy Preston – Outa Space
Kytecrash – Kytecrash – Mumbay
Binker and Moses – Feed Infinite
Billie Eilish – Dont smile at me
Ta-Ku – 25 Nights For Nujabes
Loma – Don’t Shy Away
T-Bone Walker – T-Bone Blues
Mike Cooper – The New Urban Slide/The Tiki Bar is Closed
Laurie Anderson – Long Time No See (Set and Reset score)
Laurie Anderson – Born, Never Asked
Billy Preston – Outa Space 1971 Funky Purrfection Version
Kytecrash – Mumbay
Binker and Moses – Feed Infinite
Billie Eilish – COPYCAT
Ta-Ku – 25 Nights For Nujabes
Loma – Elliptical Days
T-Bone Walker – Mean Old World
TOOLS OF THE TRADE
> what tools and materials changed your life? <
Stuff that changed my life.
Tools conceived as a tool, then the studio is also a tool.
Oil painting, an easel, studio
I remember as a toddler (at a school with the nuns, in the basement of the church) I was busy painting something behind an easel. I worked from the outside in or from the inside out, but at least in ‘peels’. This image has remained essential to me. The act too.
Later I worked at home (around 9 years old) with gouache but that broke off on canvas. A street friend told me about oil painting. She took that once. We sat on the curb of the street and she showed me her oil painting. I vividly remember how we sat there and how the materiality, the relief of the thin brushstrokes fascinated me. As a birthday present I received from my parents a box of oil paints with palette, mixing tray and medium + palette knife.
The Easel
Somewhere in the eighties my mother got her pension from the time when she worked as an unmarried woman. Once married, my father managed the incoming money. The first thing she did with her own money was give me a painter’s easel. I was then working without an easel, but this mobile plate holder offered possibilities.
Studio
The first house that I could get together with my then love was a house in the Bijlmermeer (late 1970s) A 4 room appartment. I reserved 1 space as a studio where I never worked because I saw all the time being lost in my job at the time. The moment of a conscious experience that you can now consider as a life change came when I was able to set up a studio in the attic of a company (of my then boyfriend). Amsterdam center. It was Christmas Eve (1985) and it felt like a tough decision. I was in a dimly lit rather obscure place, with decades of dust on the floor and in the cracks in the roof, fairly isolated from the company’s social activities. I knew somewhere that if I make this decision, there was no going back after that. After cleaning, installing lighting, clearing things, bringing in my own work, I felt at home there. In my own studio.
The consequences were that I spent more and more time in and outside the studio, which brought social and work changes + separation. New also painful choices, but the world was open again. I found a new studio through new contacts. Without a floor and much too expensive. I exchanged my home for an unrenovated, cheaper one. The new studio in Amsterdam Noord needed a lot of adjustments. I had to isolate the walls myself and install toilet and kitchen unit. Friends helped me. In the meantime my job had been exchanged with the Royal Art Academy in The Hague. My studio in Amsterdam Noord has been my home from 1993-1996.
At the moment (2021) I am 7 indoor studios (apart from the outdoor studios) further and each studio always felt like home.
Ellen Rodenberg 20-12-21 – posted by Ron 23-12-21
Other Studio Playlists in 2021:
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