making art...without a studio

The artist’s journey is complex, traversing through multiple seasons and stages of busyness and hibernation. Once the journey starts, one natural, important question is: where do you create, practice, and focus on your art? Across all disciplines, determining what an appropriate art making space looks like is a continual, evolving challenge for artists. A more pointed question is: what does a dedicated space for your practice look like, right now? This question goes beyond defining your basic, physical requirements—like a freight elevator, a dance mirror, electricity—and involves identifying what you need to delineate space for your art practice without necessarily renting a separate space.

On the other hand, if you’ve already determined that a separate studio space is for you and unsure of where to go next, make sure to take a look at our resources for finding space. For those who don’t want a separate space or cannot get a space for now, what can you do?

💭 practice questions to ask yourself first

Every artist is different, naturally making their needs different. The first step is to identify what the shape of your practice is and what your needs are. Some factors to consider are location, form, how you make work currently, and what your dream work conditions are. Here are some potential questions to kickoff (or revisit) your studio discovery process.

An image of Warren Harrison’s home studio, Warren is one of Fractured Atlas’s Software Developers. He produces and makes music. Image courtesy of Warren.

📍 where do you make work?

Where you live or make work will shape what studio space looks like to you. If you are based in a city like New York City, it may be hard to carve out separate space. If you live in a less densely populated area like the suburbs or a smaller city, the choice of space may be more diverse. Either way, it may be heartening to remember that creating physical boundaries around your art practice is a shared struggle, one that artists have faced in the past, and will continue to detangle in the future. Some of your favorite artists have been where you are, working out of a garage, closet, or corner.

⛲ what form does your art take?

As we all know, the art ecosystem is wide and artists work across many different mediums and disciplines. A painter who requires proper ventilation for their oil paints will require vastly different studio space from a dancer who frequently rehearses with ten or more other dancers. If you work in social practice, then your form enters into the public space. 

🌿 what are your life circumstances?

Many artists juggle other responsibilities, whether it’s teaching or a part-time job to having a family, with a partner and/or child to share their time and space with. Your circumstances will also affect how you work and what works best for you as of now. Being able to identify what life elements you are working with now will help you answer the following question.

🌈 how do you like to work?

Given what’s happening now, what is your ideal or preferred way of making work? Do you prefer silence, or do you need some background noise to get your creative juices flowing? Clarifying what way of working suits you best is just as important as trying to make whatever situation work. Understanding your ideal state of working and working backwards to see what’s possible can be helpful.

A view of the home studio of Monica Gonzalez, Fractured Atlas’s Member Experience Manager, being supervised by purr-ducer, Mimi, in the corner. Image courtesy of Monica.

🪜 reimagining what you already have

We are big proponents of organizing and decluttering, because we know that with organizing comes mental space and expansiveness to accommodate what you want to make happen. If you are figuring out what a studio space looks like for you, one idea is to tackle it via a dedicated space. Make a corner and stick to using it (as much as you can) only for your art practice, and check in after a few days, weeks, or months. What’s working? What could be tweaked to better accommodate your practice?

If you can’t create a separate space between your living area and studio space, the clock can help you carve out time for artmaking. Organizing your time and designating certain hours as  “studio time” can be another way to create a “studio” of your own.

👥 sharing with a friend or a studio partner

If you know that you need a separate space from where you live as part of your practice, consider sharing a space with a friend or a more formal studio partner. Space can be expensive to rent, to say nothing of the funds needed to maintain a space. On top of that, making a space your own can be overwhelming. Sharing can alleviate some of those stresses (though we know collaboration takes work!) and asks us to shift away from thinking of artists in their studios or rehearsal spaces quietly, hermetically working away.

✨ parting reminders

You are no less an “artist” or “working artist” because you don’t have dedicated studio space for your practice. You are an artist because you make art, no matter the circumstances (or timing). If you are doubting yourself and looking for advice, remember that new ideas can come from less conventional ways of working—even frustrating space constraints.

As your practice changes over time, so will the space that you need. After all, the beautiful part of art practice is that it is malleable and transformative.