Manuel Knapp, a true master of string as fine art, relishes mornings in his third-floor studio in a half-timbered historic building in Grossglattbach, Germany. As he sips his 9 a.m. coffee, he enjoys the quietness of the attic space and witnessing the town slowly awakening—sunlight floats through glass tiles, spotlighting spider webs as he begins…

Maya Kuvaja loves how she can experience nature from her home-based studio in the Lakes Region of western Maine. Through a single window in a two-hundred-square-foot room, she gazes out on acres of pine and oak forests and visiting animals. The varying light shining through the room influences her artwork. “Bright orange summer afternoons, pale…

Fiber artist Jo Stealey is thrilled to enter a new phase in her life. On September 1, she’ll retire from the University of Missouri as director of the university’s School of Visual Studies. This fall, she’ll be able to devote more of her day to her art instead of only early mornings or evenings. “I…

Catherine Eaton Skinner feels fortunate to have two extraordinary studios to create her mixed-media works. In her Seattle studio, she completes more paintings, taking advantage of the city’s energy, while in her secondary studio in Santa Fe, she does more thinking and planning. She divides her time between the two studios, both built fifteen years…

In 2007, Krista Harris renovated her log cabin studio in Bayfield, Colorado. Her 16′ x 32′ studio could not accommodate her large acrylic paintings nor the materials she needed—she was in an experimental phase that suited her. “This was a great investment in myself and my work, giving me validation and freedom,” says Harris. To…

After graduating from the Rhode Island School of Design last year, Bo Kyung Kim was looking for a studio in Providence. She wanted a studio near her home or work since she didn’t have a car and winters in that area can be quite cold. None met these requirements, so she decided to set up…

For the past thirty years, Bette Ridgeway has worked full-time as an artist, painting colorful canvases in large and small studios. Most recently, she converted a 14′ x 14′, light-filled bedroom in her Santa Fe home into a working studio. She removed doors from a long closet and put in three large metal bookcases to…

Nancy McTague-Stock has worked in various studios, both here and abroad, including in an old castle in the Champagne-Ardenne region of France last October. She received the Denis Diderot grant, which funded part of her stay, in a tiny village surrounded by green fields and forests. There, working in a small studio, she was inspired…

Thirty years ago, sculptor Margaret Swan converted a garage at her home into an artist studio. The five-hundred-square-foot garage, which is behind her Victorian house in a Boston suburb, boasts a high-peaked roof loft space. “It is not a source of inspiration, but a place for inspiration to take place,” says Swan. To continue reading

More than twenty-five years ago, PD Packard bought a boarded-up brownstone in Brooklyn that had been vacant for a decade. Friends nicknamed it the Adam’s family house, but to her, the entire home was inspirational, allowing her to express her true love, color—contrasting sharply with the Federal brick colonial she grew up in the suburbs…

This fall, artist Rosalyn Driscoll said goodbye to her beautiful, downtown studio. For thirty years, she’d rented the 1,200-square-foot studio in a former factory in Easthampton, MA. But escalating rents, a need for more storage space, and a desire for a shorter commute pushed her to move into a newly built studio in an open…

Metal sculptor Monica Coyne is inspired by the rainforest surrounding her forge shop, a forty-minute drive from the nearest town in Humboldt County, California. Every day, she opens two roll-up doors, onto a view of mature madrones and towering firs. It doesn’t matter if it’s raining—that area averages eighty inches of rain in winter—or hot…