THE STORY OF MY STUDIO

I used to have a studio where I taught Folk-Art years ago. It was in the historic downtown Longwood area, just 3 miles down the road from my house, in an old historic hotel, call the Langford Hotel in it's hayday.
I also had a 36 by 12 ft. porch on the back of my house not being used. It was either too hot for 8 months of the year or too muggy and cold the rest of the time.
One day my brother offered to enclose the porch for me and air-condition it. At the time he was living with me (oh goody). So for about 2 grand, we enclosed aired, windowed, electricfied, insulated this lovely room and it has saved me from paying rent for many years...as I brought my students to my home studio.
I have had many classes here, and many happy happy times with so many friends. As the years went by I would do different things to enhance the look of the studio. One of the things was the floor. It always bugged me. I had put some vinyl down and it soon went all to bits as there is a concreted floor underneath. Well I decided to paint it. I had no idea of the work involved...well here goes. The floor had to be painted in four parts because of the furniture and the dogs. We moved everything to one side and I basecoated it first with patio paint for the hardware store..allowed it to cure for 48 hours.... here you see a quarter of the floor, basecoated and a few bricks painted. I used regular acrylic artist paint.."Deco Americana"



Here is the entire quarter side bricked.

Here is the other quarter and that completed half the floor. Now I let each quarter cure for 48 hours and then varnished four coats and let that cure another 3 or 4 days before I moved the furniture over.


Whee, half done and I'm fed up and bored with the same brick over and over so I slept on it. Next day I decided to do some artistic stuff. So I made 12 by 12 art tiles the other half of the floor.



Ahhh that went faster and I'm excited...here is a closer view...oh and I decided I might as well paint the walls pink.


This is the other side with more tiles...I then filled in with bricks and stones and whatever would fit in.... It took one month for this project. I have enjoyed it for 4 years now. I see a few scratches here and there but that is because I have dragged heavy stuff accross it. I will just put an art tile over them when I'm in the mood. That's the great thing about this floor. If I drop paint on it, it's just fine. It just adds to the artwork.



The left side or the right depends which way you are standing...oh and the bricks are getting more colorful?



A longer view of the first set of bricks...