Studio #4 - The Back Porch

A studio can be anything, anywhere: a room in the house, a corner of a room in the house, a closet in a room in the house, a barn, a garage, a desk by the window, a shack, a kitchen table.
    Ginna Bell Bragg 2003

The Back Porch is barely worth mentioning as Studio #4. But… see 2003 quote from yours truly above. Can’t leave out the Back Porch.

1984. New digs on the Thacher School campus: tiny tinder-box of a house built in 1915, with room on the screened porch to stash a drawing board in the corner and call it a studio. Why not? Views of trees and a rocky little garden and the roof of the Boys’ Dorm, a few special papers and pens and boxes of dyes. A washer and dryer for dying fabric. It was enough.

In a teeny den I called an office, with an IBM Selectric typewriter, an antique desk and wooden stool, I kept a journal and wrote short stories about old women saving the world and taped recipes into binders.

The small kitchen was an extension of Studio #5. Not only did I cook up my usual storm of food, I taught Sumi Painting and served Green tea to two Thacher boys, James and Tom, both studying Kung Fu and looking for an art sensei, which for some reason turned out to be me. They painted bamboo leaves and peonies while I sat on a stool in my dressy silk kimono and read them The Tales of Genji and played Rampal on the boom box. They called me Ikuko Sensei, “Scented Teacher.”

The 1985 Fire was a studio space turning point for GB in Ojai. We were serving fruit soup to two grand dames of Ojai society in our tiny dining room. It was a 110° and the fire watch had begun. Our get-away bags were packed and we served the popovers and chicken salad in a hurry. After a tour through the tiny house and a rushed dinner, Patsy said, “You, my dear, need a studio. Come see me after the fire. I have a shack in an orange orchard for you.” She really said that. “Come see me after the fire.”

We watched the fire scream toward campus over the hills as we evacuated and upon our safe return two days later found marmots in the bathtub looking for water and rats in the Back Porch Studio drawers nibbling my precious rice paper. GB