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Portland Open Studios Tour

This is the first year I am participating in the Portland Open Studios tour. During this city wide annual event that takes place on the second and third weekends of October, more than 100 artists open their studios to the public. Any other year there would be a tour map that sends you all around town to get an intimate look at the creative spaces and processes of the local makers. And you’d discover new neighborhoods and a new favorite coffee shop or a brewpub along the way.

“Connecting with artists in their studios gives you the unique opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of their art and where it comes from”

— https://www.travelportland.com/events/portland-open-studios/

With this year's challenges, the tour had to adapt and go online just like so many other cultural events have already. At first I was pretty bummed because I was so looking forward to welcoming visitors into my space, showing my paintings, talking about my ideas and process. And as the year went on and pretty much all of my art presentation was happening exclusively online, I realized that there are great advantages to a virtual open studio tour.

Advantages of virtual artist studio tours

For one, I could invite my friends and collectors from all over the world to participate. I absolutely love my Portland art community. It has been nurturing and supportive ever since I started my journey as a painter 7 years ago. But I always want to take my art to other places, both nationally and internationally, so what a better opportunity to do it in a novel and intimate format of an open studio tour.

Talk about open: Open to the whole world! I love it.

⁠⠀

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Technical Challenges and Solutions

I moved studios just a few months ago and while I love this space, it presents a few challenges. The main one is that there is no natural light. And coming from a large industrial loft with a wall of windows, it's quite a change. There was a lot of trial and error. I finally figured out how to light my work space properly just to discover that what is more than sufficient for painting, is woefully dark for video.

It feels like an eternity since the last time I installed a show, and I can't wait to get all these small but mighty ladies up on my studio wall. It is so much fun to see them all together.

Installing artwork: A wall of babushkas

I am often so consumed by my projects and ideas, always working toward something new, pushing forward, that I forget to take a step back and take it all in. And installing artwork for this event gave me the opportunity to spend time with all these paintings and just be in their presence. It’s been a great experience, and new ideas and connections I haven’t noticed before emerged as a result.

You might wonder how long it took me to install this wall and honestly I didn’t count the hours, and it didn’t take days. Having curated a gallery for a few years, I have a lot of experience installing shows. My process might appear haphazard, but in reality it’s just a very intuitive approach to artwork installation. I hang shows the way I paint: I respond to the subjects and materials: I don’t think, I just move. And the same way as I am not afraid of mistakes on a painting (there is always more paint!) I am not concerned about trying a layout just to find out it doesn't work (there is always putty for the walls and more nails in the box.)

Here’s a little sneak peek of the Babushka Wall. Please forgive my less than stellar camerawoman skills. I recorded this while picking up the camera on the tripod and moving the whole cumbersome contraption around. Which made me realize something I never thought I would have to do, but: I have to buy a selfie stick for the official IG Live event! Yup, a selfie stick. They have stabilizers, so it will be less bumpy and woozy when I move around the studio.

How shaky is my camera work? 😅

Visit my studio virtually with IG Live

And you can see them all together, from afar and up close and personal if you tune into my IG Live on October 18th at 1pm Pacific Time. I am @postsovietart on Instagram. Here’s a link to my account and if you follow me, you’ll get a notification when the livestream begins.

You have to have an Instagram account to watch the broadcast. If you don’t or aren’t available at that time, send me an email contact@tatyanaostapenko.com and we’ll set you up with your own private studio visit.

But hurry, this orderly and well organized wall of babushkas will descend into the usual chaos of a working artist studio shortly after this Sunday open studio tour. 🙃

Do you follow artists on social media, quietly double tap the images, read captions and maybe occasionally leave a comment with a few praise words and emojis? Are you too shy to ask questions, offer your opinion or share how the artist’s works makes you feel just because you don’t think yourself qualified to express opinions about such lofty matters as art?

Guess what? The artists on the other end of this shy dance are shy and insecure as well! Hell, we are shyer and more insecure than most.

The “art world” is designed to feel exclusive and unreachable. It’s exclusive and unreachable for the majority of artists, not just for you.

But I really want you to take the following to heart:

YOU ARE A PART OF THE ART WORLD

Yep, you!

You are here reading an artist’s blog.

Paintings, sculpture and installations regularly show up on your social media feed. You wish you knew if the artwork you saw this morning was for sale and wish you could afford it, but would never dare to ask for the fear of offending the refined and lofty creature that is the Artist.

You spend time with art, even if only on your phone screen. And you are a part of the conversation and I want to tell you that the artists want to hear what you have to say!

One way of entering that conversation is through an artist studio visit

Back in the good ol’ days that would mean walking into into a battered warehouse in an industrial part of town, climbing some rickety stairs to get to a suffocatingly hot or a freezing cold raw loft studio to observe this exotic creature, the Artist, in her native habitat.

So let’s make some lemonade from the new crop of pandemic lemons and use our newly acquired teleconferencing skills to bring the studio visit experience to the comfort of our homes without the turpentine fume exposure.

In the last four months I’ve had more studio visits than I had in the prior two years.

The lockdown has normalized digital meetings and has forced many artists to turn to new ways of presenting our work and engaging with our audiences and art world professionals.

it’s been surprisingly easy, fun and comfortable. I am not saying that a digital studio visit is better than a real one. However, it does allow a close approximation of the experience. And it’s fantastic for being able to meet artists who live far away from you. While I hope that one day we can travel as usual, not all of us have the luxury of hopping on a plane just to meet our favorite artist and see their work.

This is what I want you to keep in mind about doing a studio visit:

Artists WANT to show you their work
Artists tend to work alone a lot, they crave interaction and feedback
You don't have to buy anything! This is an invitation to engage, exchange ideas, and mutual learning and discovery. It is NOT a sales pitch. But if you do fall in love with a piece, feel free to ask whether it’s for sale and the price.
Your questions aren't stupid. You don't have to be an art historian or an art buff to have an engaging conversation with an artist whose work you find interesting. Art is not some sort of special category that only the select few are allowed into

And if you need a welcoming and easy going studio artist experience to get a taste for it, book one with me!

Just write me a brief message with your preferred dates and times and we’ll connect on a teleconferencing platform of your choice. I am always excited to invite you to my studio.

SCHEDULE YOUR STUDIO VISIT

And here’s a short video of a studio visit I had with a fellow artist, arts educator and podcaster Brainard Carey.