Chapters
by Daniel Stuelpnagel
Chapter Fourteen
untitled # 316 (2005)
collection of Carolyn Eddins (Maui)Since returning from Italy, I had been painting a handful of pieces that looked very much like tropical island landscapes. Perhaps it was a subconscious reaching out, since I had heard from one of my collectors that she was planning to move to Maui.
In late 2005, I had also heard that there was a good possibility that the building housing my studio was going to be sold.
The Broom Factory, near Baltimore Harbor, was such an essential part of my work, it concerned me to think I would have to find a new studio, but rather than waiting for things to move forward I began looking at alternate spaces.
Another artist whose work I had seen in a gallery show got in touch with me because he was looking for studio space, so we began scouting out possible locations.
Irish artist Bart O’Reilly had lived in Baltimore with his wife for a couple of years. There were some connections between our painting styles; though they were quite distinct and he was primarily working in oil as opposed to my work in acrylic, it gave us a lot to talk about.
When Bart brought me to look at the space in the Station North Arts District that would soon become LOAD OF FUN studios (the former Lombard Office Furniture building), we both told multimedia artist Sherwin Mark, who had just bought the property, that we would sign a lease right away.
Between us we got more than twelve hundred square feet, a vast space with fourteen foot ceilings, and a welcome addition to my relatively small space at The Broom Factory, which I kept as a winter studio.
untitled # 328 (2005)
collection of Bernadette & Howard Gilson (Bethesda)Since observing the broad success of the Open Studios program in San Francisco during my time there, I had organized several studio openings each year in addition to the Open Studio Tour events sponsored by Baltimore’s School 33 Arts Center. I worked to expand the database mailing list I had been developing since starting my career in Washington, designed, printed and mailed postcards, and sent emails linking viewers to my web site in an ongoing effort to share the art work and collaborate with other artists in the buildings.
Often attended by as many as a hundred visitors from Washington and New York as well as the Baltimore area, these events were our best efforts to curate exhibitions of our own work in addition to seeking gallery shows.
untitled # 312 (2005)I continued to work with palette knife, integrating different painting techniques with various compositional approaches as I bumped up against the unique portrayal of surrealistic landscapes, working with the earth tones that had become more prominent since the trip to Italy.
untitled # 313 (2005)
collection of John and Virginia Stuelpnagel (Baltimore)As 2005 drew to a close, I pulled together more than twenty paintings spanning four years of work for a solo exhibition at the Made In Metal Gallery in Baltimore, schedule to open in January, 2006.
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