Studio Hazards

By Carolyn  Edlund

I’ve been reminded lately of why I closed my studio – and painfully so. The joint in the thumb of my right hand is so sore that grasping even small things is uncomfortable, and turning a doorknob is agony. The arthritis in the base of my thumb is the latest remnant of a life spent in repetitive motion, during long hours in the studio using my hands as tools. Three years ago, the joint in my left thumb was replaced. After a few cortisone shots, the right one will probably be under the knife in the next year or so.

I closed my studio more than ten years ago. Besides general burnout from traveling all over the country flying to trade shows and driving to retail shows, my body had begun to give out. Twenty years of studio work. Leaning forward to paint and do close-up work, and hauling 50 lb. boxes of clay, tents and exhibit equipment had caused a lot of back and neck pain and sciatica. I knew my chiropractor on a first-name basis. And even though I’d hired studio assistants, the damage was done.

During my college years, a book came out that got a lot of students talking. It was called “Artist Beware.” Our chain-smoking ceramics instructor, who already had emphysema at the time, referred to it and called our attention to the dangers of silicosis and breathing dangerous fumes. We all had respirators; thank God I started out in my own studio with some safety gear. But I still wonder.

These days I see other artists are concerned about breathing toxic fumes, and the side-effects of solvents, which can be career-changing. I don’t blame them.

And so, after a couple of decades in the business, I decided to pack it in. In late summer of 2001, I started applying for jobs, thinking that it would take several months to get one. To my surprise, I was hired very quickly as a rep for an art publishing company. I had planned to go out of business at the end of that year, so I rounded up my studio helpers and parceled out the rest of our wholesale orders for them to complete while I started my new career.

On September 13, 2001, two days after the towers fell, I walked through an eerily silent airport and boarded a nearly empty, heavily-guarded airplane to San Francisco for job training during a watershed moment for my country and for myself.

It wasn’t a tough decision, at the end. I knew I was finished in the studio. We’d talked it over endlessly, and I have never regretted it.  I had met not only my goals, but some great friends as well. I still see some of them and fondly remember others. But things had changed, and I needed to move on to the next chapter in my life. It was time to close the studio.