A Day In the Studio Life of Katy Seals

Good Morning!  I am excited to start a new feature on my blog where a different artist each week documents their day in the studio from morning to night for all of us to see.  I am excited to see how they incorporate artmaking into their lives but I also like to see all the other little things they do in the day. It's a neat glimpse inside others' lives.

To kick this off my sweet friend Katy Seals sent me a very detailed list of her day. She has really set the bar high for this project.  If you have read my blog for a while you've seen Katy mentioned here several times. She is a hardworking artist that continues to inspire me.  Keep up with her work here.

And now I will let Katy take it away...

My Studio is the back wash room at my house in Norman, Oklahoma. It is not the best studio I've ever had, but it's something and I'm happy to have that something. I have to be creative with the limited space; when making prints I have used my washer and dryer as my screen print table and constructed a drying rack using string. Working from home can have its perks as well. Such as knocking out daily chores while working on a woodcut.  On Wednesday July, 24th I was working on a sewing project for a new body of work and this is how my day went:

                                    

Usually my (studio) days start off around 7:45-8:ish. I feel that NOT being awake by 9:00 am makes me feel like a waste of skin cells. 

I like to wear comfortable clothes and shoes and socks. Even though I'm in my own home I tend to drop things on my feet which could throw off a productive day and send it into a spiral of curses and pouting. After brushing my teeth, washing my face and putting on tinted moisturizer (gotta moisturize) I like to wash the dishes from the day before.  Do I seem like a domestic goddess?

-By this time it is 9:00 am and I'm drinking coffee, eating cereal and chugging water. I felt a bit dehydrated because the night before my boyfriend, Cody, got free tickets to see Flaming Lips/ Kings of Leon for a benefit concert. I wouldn't call it a hangover, just a slight case of the barley flu. 

In this time frame I like to check/ sort any mail (electronic as well ) AND get caught up on all of the social medias (Facebooks, intstagrams, twitters) and celebrity gossip (The Superficial) . Duh. I also feel like during this time a lot of text messages get sent out to various friends and I go around "Likeing" pictures and posts. It makes me feel like a 90's valley girl. 

 -At 10:00 am after some quality time with my electronic devices and coffee surging through my veins I feel ready to be productive. I like studio days that are back to back, so I can dive right back into whatever project I was working on. In this case, I have been revisiting these large scale underwear that I made during grad school and felt like they weren't doing much for my work at the time. The day before I was sewing the "panty liner" into the crotch of this particular pair. I was able to pick back up where I left off.

-After 30 minutes of sewing I remember I promised Cody I would box/tape up some shoes he wanted to return to the internet.  All the while catching up on The Bachelorette (no, no shame at all). 

-Around noon is where I come to a stopping point. I finished the panty liner and have began to sew some of the text onto the panties. 

              -During lunch I like to watch trash television because it is my muse. Plus, Long Island Princesses is so entertaining. Before I eat lunch I like to stretch my back and legs because I get cramped sitting at my desk in the "Zorack" position. My lunch was kinda pathetic and boring looking back on it but I didn't want to leave the house because I was on a role. 

- Lunch was 2 hard boiled eggs, veggies, almonds and some pineapple.

At 1:20 I returned back to sewing..... While listing to Fitzdog Radio podcast with Fred Armisen on. It was a very good episode if anyone is asking. 

2:45 rolls around and I take a greek yogurt popsicle and coffee sewing break. It felt nice to step outside. 

-4:45, Cody comes home and says hello and we have a quick visit about the day, then I am almost finished with the text on the piece so I continue sewing. At 6:00 I finish the text and take my panties outside to get a good look. The text reads "Love is where you find it when you find no love at home, and there's nothing cold as ashes after the fire is gone" from the 1971 country song "After the Fire is Gone" sung by Conway Twitty and Loretta Lynn. 

-7:00ish rolls around and Cody makes us grilled ham and cheese sandwiches and some sweet potato fries. After dinner we watched an episode of The Sopranos (its 2001 at our house). We attempted watching Andrei Tarkovsky's "Ivan's Childhood", which was sad and slow. I'm sure you're thinking I must have the worst taste in all popular culture, but who cares?

            -Around 10:15 Cody and I retire to our bedroom while I finish the last chapter from this awful book I've been reading this summer called "Tiger, Tiger". David Sedaris was talking about it on the "How Was Your Week" podcast and I felt like if it was good enough for him I must like it. It's basically a sad contemporary-real-life-version of Lolita, but you don't feel sorry for the main character, and Jeremy Irons has nothing to do with it.

 -Cody started talking about "goat heads", these spear-like weeds that were indigenous to a field near his elementary school and how his friends would throw them at each other. 

-11:00ish is where I believe I fell asleep and ended my day. 

Here is a video of Katy's finished piece.

I hope this was as fun for your to read as it was for me. I love seeing how other artists spend their days. I will continue to do this so long as the entries come rolling in. If you are an artist and you would like to document your day get in touch!

Now get to work!

(I would like to note that while putting this together Katy just emailed me to talk about The Sopranos because I am currently watching it for the first time, too. We are both in a time warp.)