My dream London Studio

I guess I’m in the touring spirit so here’s another entry in my tour of London, Canada. This one is a little more self-serving as it is based on my dream of where and what I’d like my London studio to be.

PUC Substation

This building is located on Carling St., between Richmond and Talbot St. in downtown London. It is a Public Utilities Commission (PUC) substation.
I like this building not because it’s anything to write home about. I lived in Europe for too many years to be instantly impressed by a frieze, column, or cornice.
The frieze on this building is relatively standard consisting of a name carved in cement. The portico façade is nothing that will set the architectural community humming with its fake columns. The cornice work doesn’t rank with the Elgin Marbles but it is there. Altogether, it’s a formal early twentieth century building, which has been changed to fit its utilitarian function as a substation for the PUC.

Pas Sensation

So using my imagination and a little help from Photoshop, I’ve given you some of the restorations and changes I’d make to the building to make it into my London studio for both sculpture (ground floor) and painting (top floor). I liked this as a studio for several reasons: it’s downtown and not far from my house, it gets light from three directions and no southern light. It’s big enough to store finished work and give the room to work on new works. It’s independent from other buildings with its own entrance. With my changes, it would also have very large doors to move large works in and out. The street it is on is a low traffic street so I could pull a large truck up and load art without bothering others. That alone is enough reason to want it as my studio.
As you can see from the image above I’ve changed the doors on the ground floor, sandblasted the brick to a nearby colour match, and had my name chiseled into the frieze above “Pas Sensation”.
Therefore, this would be my dream studio in London, Canada. It would be nice if it looked over the Thames River just a block away but moving it is a little bigger job than my dreams and then I’d just build my complete dream studio anyway. This will do.

before and after

Now my current studio is satisfactory for clean work such as painting but sculpture must be done some place else so this would unify my work environment into one location, which is ideal for me.

Carling St. looking east to One London Place.

In closing, I’ve included a surrounding snapshot of the street in front of the building looking east towards One London Place, which I wrote about in the post below. It is on a one-block street across from a good restaurant and café “The Marienbad”. Perfect for me right now.

Okay, it doesn’t have the views of my old New York studio but then it’s not New York (click to see), it’s quiet London on the Thames, Canada. My old studio in Amsterdam during the seventies was my best studio to date with New York coming in second. If I had this as my London studio, it would definitely take third. If you came to visit me in this studio, we could bask in the light, drink coffee or single malt, and cross the street for a good meal when we had finished looking at the art.

I’ll show you my current painting studio, which I built at my home here, some other time.

Ps. Arsenal beat Liverpool 3 to 1 yesterday, which locks them as second place in the EPL and a position in next years EUFA Champions League. Good work lads - now for the FA Cup against ManUre, aka Manchester United.