Where Women Create Fobots

First off, I want you to look at this picture, and then scroll down to “What. A. Dump.” and compare.

Back now?  Good.  Because this all happened in ten days.  Ten long, grueling, backbreaking days.  And it is sooooooooo worth it.

Jo Packham, editor, and Ryne Hazen, photographer, stopped by last Thursday to cover my studio for the magazine “Where Women Create”.  I’d met Jo over a year ago, in the dark ages when I was exhibiting at licensing shows, and she liked my work and the pictures I’d sent of my illustration studio.  She had NO IDEA about the Fobots, and let’s just say she hadn’t seen anything like them or the workshop where I make them.  In fact, her exact words upon seeing the workshop were “Oh my god.  We are going to have to bump you up.”  Apparently, each issue has to be carefully balanced to avoid featuring too many studios that look the same.  No problem there–this place doesn’t look like ANYWHERE else.

The walls are blue now, and have robots drawn on them in chalk to look like blueprints.  My talented friend Lisa Stewart, of EC Stewart Designs, has a fabulous video on her blog that shows you how to add unsanded grout to flat latex paint to turn any surface into a chalkboard.  Check it out for yourself at http://creativegoddess.wordpress.com/2009/05/21/studionews-make-your-own-chalkboard-paint/ . Two project tables from Pier One have been upfitted with wooden boxes to hold all of the small stuff, and are topped by a recent flea market find–a library card catalog for the even smaller stuff.  The lovely and talented Phil hung some of our trade show track lighting over the workbench, which now has a formica surface that is –thank god–impervious to all the liquids I keep spilling on it.  There’s a cool new ceiling fan that’s very deco/robot looking.  And two steel shelving units hold all of the crap that once covered the floor.

So I lost ten days of production.  Big deal.  I can now ACTUALLY FIND STUFF, and the time spent cursing and searching for that thing, ya know, that thing with the dial and the knobs….that’s been cut waaaay down.