Studio Tour
For 10 years Jason Bouldin maintained a studio in the 10-foot-wide, enclosed front porch of his home, located on a quiet, tree-lined street in a small town. He had long dreamed of a place with enough floor space to hold several projects, room to back away from a painting and see it at a distance, a ceiling high enough to accommodate full-length portraits—“so that I don’t have to sit cross-legged on the floor to paint on the lower half of a canvas”—and north light. So when the house next door was up for sale five years ago, Bouldin jumped at the chance to convert it into his “ideal” studio.
After preliminary discussions with several architects, Bouldin bravely decided to serve as his own. With two master craftsmen, he remodeled the building in two years, referring to his “three-dimensional blueprints”—two handmade scale models of the renovated structure. First he and his crew combined most of the interior footage in the circa-1940, 1,200-square-foot cottage to create one “great room” for the studio. Then they opened up the attic for a vaulted ceiling. Last they added a shed dormer to the existing roofline to allow north light into the painting area. A structural engineering firm was consulted to make sure the building remained sound and stable during and after the renovations.
www.artistsmagazine.com ■ November 2008
This westward view from the bal-cony/loft shows the fireplace and two small antique chimney windows, which Bouldin included as architectural accents. Technically, western-fac-ing studio windows are taboo, but privacy-glass glazing disperses much of the light, which can be blocked if necessary. The bench seat to the right of the fireplace provides space to relax or nap and is a favorite spot for the artist’s wife, Alicia, and her book.
This northeast corner is Bouldin’s main work area. The vast east wall (partially visible) serves as an “oversized drawing board.” Bouldin uses a stationary palette that his father designed and built about 50 years ago (see inset above). A worktable (at the right side of the photo), used for framing and other projects, can be set for studio suppers served to guests and clients. “It’s an unusual, but romantic, setting. Plus, we
don’t have to clean up the house,” says Bouldin. (Note the architectural models under the table.)
Located at the back of the house are a bedroom, a bath and a galley kitchen for accommodating guests and clients. A breakfast nook has been refitted as a business office and computer station. In the bal-cony/loft is Bouldin’s library retreat with shelves for his folio books and artist monographs. He jokes, “As my dad says, everybody knows artists can’t read, but we do like our picture books.”
The front French doors lend extra light and ample room to bring the largest canvases in and out. Above the doors, the shed dormer provides north light. The dormer was placed at one end of the room in part to accommodate a cross gable integral to the structure, and in part to lower the light level behind the artist and “give a soft sort of spotlighting effect to a painting on the easel.” The stained paneling along the west wall and in the nook also contributes to a lower level of light in this area of the studio.
To supplement the north light from the three big
dormer windows, Bouldin decided to “go green” with
an interesting skylight product called Solatube (www.
solatube.com). These dome skylights
(also visible on the roof in photo #1)
are designed to gather and transmit
light consistently throughout the day.
They use a series of prisms to bring in
as much light as possible at dawn and
dusk and to repel excess light when
the sun is high overhead. Bouldin is
pleased with the way the dome inte-
rior’s frosted lens diffuses the light
admitted into a soft “white” glow.
On a light shelf just below the
dormer windows is located a series
of Corelite fixtures with Sylvania
FP54/860/HO daylight-adjusted flu-
orescent bulbs for nighttime and
lowlight conditions. The electrical
ballasts in the fluorescent fixtures are equipped with rheostats so that electric light can be “mixed” with natural light near dawn and dusk.
A graduate of Harvard University, Jason Bouldin received most of his formal art training from his father, the artist Marshall Bouldin. “Being rather
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