Artist Studio Visit with Noelle Phares

Hello everyone, I'm back again. Two in one day studio visits. Um, this afternoon we're going to be talking to Noel Ferris in Denver, um, which is interesting because both Debbie and Noel were guests on the podcast early on, and it's fun we're getting to check in with them again today a few years later. I think maybe it's been about 2 years-ish since, uh, I talked to Noel last, um, at least in depth. So I'll get her on here and we will figure out how things are going for her. And she has a brand new studio, I believe, um, that she's going to show us around. So let's see. Hello everybody. Oh, hey Noel.

Hey. Can you see me yet?

I can see you, but, uh, it's broke. There you are.

Hi, how's it going? All right, how are you? Good. Long time no talk.

I know, it's been a while. Um, you've been super busy though the whole time.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, you're obviously behind us, but, um, I don't know, there were like some big minuses just in terms of art stuff and obviously like exhibition dates and all that, but there were also big pluses just in terms of my practice and kind of how I sell art. Um, talk about that some way if you want, but, but luckily I think the, the best thing about, um, just how wildly different this last year was, was just I had a little more bandwidth to think about my studio, which we basically worked on for almost 14 months, and it's just about done. So I moved in. I'm really excited.

Cool. Um, so it's a space that is for you to work, but then also you have some other spaces to, to provide space for other artists, right?

Yeah, yeah. So we basically all, um, I'll give you the whole tour.

I'll turn out to be obnoxious because I'm like really excited about it, but I'm, I'm really excited to see it because from what I've seen, like, it looks beautiful and full of light and modern and awesome.

Yeah, it's been really nice. Um, yeah, so I wanted to build kind of my dream space, which like, who doesn't? But you know, to do that, we're like, well, it's gonna be really expensive. How can we try to offset, you know, the costs for just, you know, the construction itself and then also just ongoing costs. You know, you buy a building, there's a mortgage payment. So we bought an old, old ass building that we were able to just kind of scrape and we built out, you know, 3, like they're totally separate, but 3 additional artist studios that it's awesome because we actually— they aren't like fully filled yet, but just those payments will like help us cover the costs for sure going forward. But it's also just going to be really nice to have some more artists around because I've been working from my home studio for the last, um, I don't know, 3 and a half years. And I don't know, do you work from home a lot, George?

Uh, every day.

And it gets kind of old. I don't know. I mean, I think I outgrew my home studio probably about years ago. You were probably— when you were there, I'd already sort of outgrown it.

But take over the rest of the house a little bit.

Totally took over the rest of the house. Uh, but I think my entire garage was— oops, I gotta put this baby on silent. Here we go. Um, yeah, so I had a bedroom in the house that I turned into my studio.

You saw that.

And then basically our entire garage is full of my art crap, and then our whole basement, which is like the whole footprint of the, you know, the main house— it's Colorado, we all have basements— the whole footprint of the basement was like pretty much full of my art stuff too. So my poor— who's wonderful, um, she's here so you guys meet her— but Laura, um, has basically been like working away in my basement for the last 6 months. And then, you know, Rachel, who also works with me, and Abby before before that they just were like working in the living room on a table there and the basement. It's just— and then like all the storage stuff in the shed, it's just, just really hard to do it at home. So we built this place.

Have you moved—

are you—

have you moved your practice in there yet or not?

Yeah, yeah, I started moving that stuff in about, um, 2 weeks ago. Uh, well, we've been— I'll show you all the custom stuff we did. So we, we worked with the whole build and construction team, um, build Build 3, which I think I tagged on, which is the post I put today. And then Ark Den is a Denver-based architect. But we worked with the whole team to do the construction stuff, and they helped with some of like the custom build-out inside. But, um, you know, a lot of this stuff, just because I have a big part of my art thing is my print business, and discovered over the last 2 years that when I'm moving as many prints as I do, like, I need a lot of kind of custom infrastructure for like organizing prints and there's just always— and framing and shipping. And yeah, so, um, I think the hardest part about just thinking through the build-out for this space was thinking about how to organize everything functionally for myself since people move stuff in and out a lot and, you know, have enough surface area and whatnot.

Will, can you show us around?

Yeah, totally.

So those will, uh, You got my, like, designer brain going, and I really want to see some stuff.

Cool, we'll go outside. We're still kind of working on the outside, but, um, so we're out in Lakewood, Colorado, and I'll kind of bring you out to the front of the building, which we haven't started yet. But these are kind of our three, um, there's actually, we have an art, some art, some floral designers in this guy, but these are our three rental studios. Out front. Um, our front drive is a complete mud pit right now because we had a— we just had to rip the whole thing up and it's just— you can't pave with snow, so it's been really fun. But, um, these are—

oh wow, you've got exterior entrance? Yes, for each one.

There's bathrooms for each of these, which is awesome, especially for COVID. I'll grab the keys and bring you guys into one of these, but, um, my space is in the back here. We have like this nice little river kind of going through. But this is my space, um, so it's great. They're all separately addressed. Just put in my, uh, garage door this morning. That's really nice for me, um, for like loading in big stuff, you know what I mean? We'll kind of go on the front door here. So it's not retail space, but I do have a lot of people come do studio visits, so I did kind of design um, like some very nice, um, space for sort of a lounge area. So you guys, I'm gonna not show these things too much, but, uh, basically here's, here's my studio. So you can see paintings. Yeah, well, we'll show the paintings for this show a little bit, but I'll walk you guys through everything. But this is my painting area in the back. This is my little like kind of—

that is that picture up the other day.

I was like, oh, that's awesome. I wonder— it's really nice. Yeah, so we did, um, we did skylights everywhere. There's 3 big skylights. There's like a ton of light. It's really nice. And then this garage door opens and just gives, um, it's kind of just like a really nice footprint for like loading big stuff in and out of the space. Um, that's kind of nice because it lets a lot of light in too. And you know, painters need a ton of light, diffuse light that way. Yeah, exactly. So, and then there's Laura, and I'll walk you guys through our like workroom back there. I didn't tell her we were doing this today, so she's like, well, you could have told me so I could have like dressed for the occasion. Sorry, Laura. Um, so I'm gonna walk you guys over to Fergus, who's my new puppy. Hey, Fergus! Hi, Fergus! He weighs 3 pounds right now. He's 4 months old. He just likes to sleep. Thanks, Laura. Laura says it's beautiful. Um, I'm just like holding Fergus up because he's tiny and he's ridiculous, but he's a really great studio doggy.

Oh, he's like— so I've been, um, for Christmas I got some like Ugg slippers. Yeah, I was walking around in them the other day and I was like, I really like these. It feels like I have my feet on a really fuzzy soft dog.

Fergus earmuffs, buddy. No one's gonna turn you into Uggs. Yeah, I totally get that. Um, he's insanely soft, he's awesome. So yeah, he just kind of chills in here. We're like still working on training, so I just try to like not let him run amok too much because he pees on the ground. Yeah, but my whole thought with, uh, I mean, I am one of those people, I mean, I'm usually up standing, sanding, painting, and I'll show you guys that stuff. But, um, when I'm like doing computer work, I often like to be like sitting on a nice couch or laying down. It's— I'm like one of those people who likes to lay down when I'm like working on my computer, so I definitely wanted to put that kind of an area here. Um, and then I have a lot of meetings, like people who are coming to talk about art and see art, so, you know, we hang out here. Um, so I'll walk you guys back here. The other, you know, we really wanted a big utility sink. I work with all sorts of different paints, acrylic, oils, gouache and stuff, and You know, it's really critical to have a— if you can, these are all like super nice to haves, but just a big-ass utility sink, um, that can just— you know, you don't want to dump your turpentine down there, but right, that's pretty nice to have. So, um, still haven't done some of the finishing touches like putting up some racks and stuff here because, you know, I'm always like— I'm a really messy artist, so I like to throw my brushes everywhere and like rags and whatnot everywhere. So I'd like to—

I'm just—

I've been trying to think through like, how do you— how do I build a home? Here, I'll flip this for a second. How do I build like a home for all my stuff to live so that it doesn't just like accumulate all over every surface?

It looks like you're really trying to be super clean and organized and whatever with, with your space, like accounts for your—

I'm trying.

Feels, feels nice.

Say that one more time, George.

I said it looks like you're trying to organize things and put things together in a really smart way so that you can be messy and it still feels nice.

That's the right way to put it. Yeah, I'm like one of those people who's naturally like tornado disaster, so I have to like build really convenient solutions to be able to like stay organized.

Yeah.

Yeah. So anyways, here's my— this is funny to show you my bathroom, but, uh, wait, I don't know, we kind of like built out— I just put that plant up. We kind of built out this whole place to be, you know, if I ever— if we ever sell this building. Um, I love fireclay tile, so we did some cool tile in here. Um, we kind of built it out to where if we ever sell it, this could be like a whole standalone apartment kind of thing. Um, I'm— I really love Jeremy Miranda. He's a painter. So this is the temporary home for my original Miranda. Do you know him?

I don't, but I like it.

He's really good.

It reminds me of an Austin artist, Patrick Puckett, except he's—

Oh, I'm obsessed with Patrick Puckett. Same greens.

Yeah, totally.

So, uh, yeah, just utility closet again, just places to like throw all my junk. So I, I also, when I go to art festivals and stuff, I like to, um, make my setup something that can be at least somewhat reminiscent of like the finishes in a house, so that when the art is up, it kind of helps people envision how will this painting look in my house.

So good idea.

Yeah, a little bit.

Not have people put paintings up.

No, I mean, yeah, the Pro Panels carpet walls are really functional, but like paintings don't live on carpet walls in houses. So when we were thinking through the finishes for the studio, I'm going to show here somewhat regularly too, so I was like, let's, you know, at least make some areas just kind of reminiscent of what a decent finishes in a home would look like. Also, I— when I'm painting, I think a lot about what pieces will look like in a house too. So it helps when I'm looking around like, oh, what are— what are kind of the colors I want to pull out in pieces? Um, so we built this kitchen, which, um, I— I'm gonna spend a ton of time here. So I do use the kitchen, but, uh, here's— here's the kitchen as of now. It's like really lovely. Yeah, opinion. I do a ton of small works just kind of as I'm painting big pieces, um, to play with, you know, different materials and different palettes.

That one with the saguaros.

Yeah, this little guy. So these three actually, um, these I will— these and a number of others, all these ones on these little raw linen pieces, I'll sell when I do an opening here I think late next month. But these are all pieces that I painted while I was playing with this new material before painting the pieces for your show that opens on Friday.

It's— look, what kind of linen is that?

Sorry, it's, um, it's St. Mary's. It's just a beautiful cotton canvas. I don't know, it looks more like linen. It's technically a cotton canvas, but I'll just, um, you know, when I have new material I'm working with and I've not really painted on— those are the pieces over there, which I'm not going to get too close to them because I haven't really shared them yet. But I'll often have my stretcher, um, I'm gonna come over here, give me like scraps of the material so that I can rip it up and like, you know, see how water is going to behave on it. And I wasn't sure if I wanted to do a bunch of gouache on these pieces. I was thinking that I would do some like ink and really light like watercolor and gouache washes. And so I got a bunch of sample stuff just to see how it behaved on the surface before I had them stretched. So that's what a lot of those studies are.

Um, so you just mentioned you have your stretcher send you some samples.

Do you—

so do you have like a stretcher in the Denver area that you work with to—

yeah, stuff, you know. Um, I, I still— for my, my panels, I have— I got a guy for my big panels, but for canvases and linens, um, I still just buy most of them from Meininger's and the guy, his name is Pat, um, Pat and Mininger's in downtown Denver. He's, he's a really great stretcher, so he can custom stretch anything. He does a really good job. So I'll go— I mean, I custom order from him a lot, and I'll just have him either send or just let me like take some sample stuff with me. Yeah, which is great. So, you know, some of these pieces are like, they're totally standalone, they're really different. This is actually a Grand Canyon study on the same linen, but a lot of it's just me kind of seeing how, you know, different types of paint behave.

Yeah, how the media reacts with it.

And exactly, this is my little piece from, uh, it's actually my fiancé's uncle's arm. So I'll walk you over to my kind of painting area right now. Um, this is kind of my main painting spot. I think we built this pretty sweet wall can— or wall easel. Oh wow, that's awesome. So that's pretty sweet. Um, my fiancé Taylor is— he, he's in tech, but he has a degree in sculpture. It's, it's kind of— it's, it's really out there, but his whole thing was furniture making. So it's so amazing for me because, you know, yeah, as an artist, um, you know, every time I have a new art festival or something, I often have like new needs for displaying stuff. And then when we're thinking about the build-out, I'll show you like the whole kind of workroom that was all stuff we custom built. Um, Taylor is like really good at thinking through these kinds of projects, and he's also really excited about it. His mom's a painter, um, so he's always been helping her think about, um, how to, I don't know, set up her studio well. So this is my wall easel. This is a piece I'm about to start.

It's just— it's got some channels there that you raise and lower.

And yeah, exactly, it just has some tracks on the wall, and we kind of just went, oh, oak with everything. So these are just hardwood, um, kind of tracks that basically I can paint as big as this wall, which is, you know, a 9-foot wall, which is awesome. So nicer than having a massive easel, you know what I'm saying?

Yeah, I'm curious to see a big one sometime.

Yeah, I'm getting there. It was really hard to do huge ones in my house, but, um, yeah, getting there. So, uh, this is a piece I just finished, I think, last week. All right, yeah, yeah, Pat is about to get more business. Um, so this is just like a little— this is my travel easel. I do like to paint plein air sometimes when I'm traveling, but right now it's just like a nice portable easel for the studio. I work with that at home too sometimes. Um, but a little bit of a—

what are you carrying over to that one?

I know, I can't help it, George. It's, it's like been in my mind. I've been doing a lot of, a lot of arches lately. So this is my old drafting desk that I actually— until I moved here, um, I used to— like, until now, this has a front that can go almost vertical, so I attach a bar to the bottom of that, and this is where I would paint my big canvases too. Okay. Which was great. It's like a, you know, 1950s drafting desk, um, super sturdy. People ask me all the time where I get it. I don't know, it's It's from the '50s. I got it from my artist mother-in-law. But the only limiting thing there is I also really like to be working on small pieces at the same time. These are actually more pieces of that linen. So, um, it's just— it was the constant game of, you know, setting up, and I could paint basically one thing at a time. And I, I do like to think about painting in series, so, um, it's really nice. I now have some really great areas to paint big pieces, spaces to bop from one to the other. Yeah, so here's kind of my, um, you know, any artist I think, uh, realizes that running, like, being an artist is a lot more than just painting. You know, I spend probably still at least 30 hours a week just running my business. Yeah, so it's desk, it's just desk space for that over here, which is nice to have it next to all my painting stuff because I do often, you know, a lot of it is like retouching on Photoshop, um, my high-res images for what I pull prints off of. Yeah, so it's kind of nice to have those next to each other. Um, and then, uh, like, what—

these days, what, um, percentage—

percentages do you think prints versus original, uh, in terms of like revenue or kind of volume?

Oh, uh, either both, I'm not sure.

I say— probably won't share my, my numbers, but I would say that 70% of my business comes from— probably maybe closer to 80% is related to moving prints. Wow. Yeah. Um, which is great. So I'll, you know, I probably painted about 45 pieces last year. You know, full-scale big paintings just down to studies. Um, this is iced tea, it's not whiskey. Um, yeah, from those, you know, I sold like— I sold a lot of prints. So one from each. I, I don't run prints of studies, but I do run prints of pretty much all my full-scale originals. There's some exclusivity agreement around it for like— but, um, Yeah, I, you know, a lot, most, a lot of my print sales come from Etsy. And so that's kind of what this whole— I'll walk you through, um, our like workroom back there. But that's a lot of what Laura helps me with is packaging prints, shipping prints for like all the online order stuff. But then we work with 20 different retail shops too, maybe a little more than that. And that's all prints. Gotcha. So that's like wholesale prints to like nice, you know, boutique-y, like home design shops. So that's a lot of time just packaging prints, moving prints, shipping prints. Um, so yeah, that's, that's a lot of the business. But it's just that when I'm, you know, spending 6 months painting for a show, I'm still able to like pay, pay my rent, pay the mortgage.

And then those, you know, pieces that you're making for the show will turn into prints eventually.

Totally. And, you know, I think the best thing about that is that, you know, originals are expensive. Not everyone has the budget for it, so it's awesome to be able to share the art with like a much wider group of people. Definitely. Yeah. So I think the key there, I think people ask I'm sure any artist who sells prints gets asked this a lot, but like, how do you make your prints? What's the whole process for that? And I'm always really stingy about sharing like who my— who my partners are for that because it was, you know, it's a big job to find like all the right partners for photography and printmaking and all that. But, um, I did spend a ton of time a couple years ago like finding the right art photographers and then finding the right printmaker and all the right materials. Um, it makes Yeah.

Oh, Jeevon Lee is on here and has a, uh, a good question.

Yeah, I see it. Hi, hi, hi, Jeevon. How do you handle collector resistance to prints? I ran into issues with perception of devaluation originals. Totally. Um, and I've had that conversation with galleries too because, um, you know, I pretty much won't— I won't show with a gallery who won't let me sell prints of the work.

Yeah. Can I, can I jump in here too? Sorry, Jeevan, I think that maybe—

I don't— I—

Noelle came at this from doing prints originally. Like, it's just like she was— you were doing prints almost right off the bat, and that became like your main business, right?

That's true.

And so it's like, to get in the gallery, the gallery has to say okay.

Yeah, it's just a non-negotiable. But I totally get it. I mean, Javon, your question about, you know, does having prints out there in the world devalue the original, um, I've had that conversation particularly with, you know, a couple different gallery owners and collectors of the originals, and I've kind of just not allowed much room for the thought that they do devalue the originals, uh, to breathe. I kind of just immediately take the stance that you know, having reproductions of the print out there ends up, I think, increasing the value of the original work because it allows more people to be aware of like who the artist is and what the style is. Um, and it makes the original for sure more unique. There's one original and there's— I don't even do limited editions of prints. There's God knows how many prints. So I've had collectors ask like, oh, is it, you know, is my original gonna be worthless? Um, you know, if there's 100 other people with prints of it and You know, I just take a pretty strong stance that I'm pretty sure that if I didn't have— first of all, if I didn't sell prints of my work, I don't think anyone would know who I was. So their original would be worth nothing if there weren't prints out there of my work.

That is a great way. That's a great way to think about it. I mean, and I think it's— I think that you're right, you know, like there's this huge awareness like built from, from people having prints all over the place and everybody goes in somebody's house and sees a painting they like, you know, like in a print form, they're like, who's 'Who's this?' Totally, you know.

And like, the value of art is so subjective that things that put value behind art are just really ephemeral and they're not really fixed. So maybe for some artists who end up making prints later, like, the printing might just not really go with just their whole practice. But I don't know, again, for me, I, I've always looked at prints as this is a really tacky way to put it, but they are almost like, you know, a business card. They like get out there in the world, so we'll get eyes on it. And, you know, the price of my originals keeps going up and up, and that just would not happen without prints at all. So I don't know, you want— I think you just don't let them consider that. Yeah, reality. That's how I do it.

It's also, you know, somebody— Javon, your style is so thick with paint that there's a lot of, you know, huge tactile kind of impact, like larger than a regular, a regular painting, I think.

And so that, that's tough for you, but it's just like, it's like not a one-to-one translation. I think, you know, I know your paintings too, Jevon. There's— they are so thick that texture is like more than half of like the amazing presence of your work. So I would see— I can see why this wouldn't translate, um, in a print. Whereas, you know, when I first started doing this, I was watercoloring. It's like a 1-to-1 translation, original to print. You like really could not tell the difference. It's not quite the same anymore since I paint much more with like oils and acrylics on canvas. But I hope that sort of addresses it. Yeah, I think so.

I think that was a pretty thorough, uh, discussion on that. Can we see your—

let's show you this, um, Just like workroom. Yeah. Um, so this is really where like a lot of the custom— sorry, Laura, we're gonna invade your territory. We haven't— we're still organizing in here a little bit, but, um, it kind of looks like a mail room. But basically this whole thing is designed to like organize prints and, uh, frame prints and package prints. So when I get prints in, we do 4— I do like 4 different kind of main sizes of prints.

Amazing.

It's great. But they're all— so they all used to live in a flat file in my, in my, uh, my home studio. And the amount of time that Laura had to spend, just like, you know, for each size I'll have, you know, 80 different prints or something, and, you know, many, many of each. So like, to find a print to like pull out to ship for an order, she was like sifting through a bazillion prints. Now, you know, when we thought through this, I was like, they have to be— they have to be out— they have to be alphabetized. Excuse me. Um, so we have these like mailroom slots that my fiancé and I built. These, that was, we've been working weekends straight for like months now.

Do you guys have robots and an app that—

No, this ain't Amazon, George. We have Laura's nimble hands, but Laura also helps, you know, us think through like how do we efficiently organize the work so that we don't spend a ton of time like sifting through crap to like keep inventory numbers accurate and also find stuff. So, you know, for each different, um, slot, everything's titled. I title all my paintings, and they all get signed and titled before they go out for orders. So they're all organized by title and size, which is awesome. And I'm like, Laura, get a Riverbend print out. She can like go to the R section of the 11x14s, or, you know what I'm saying. Let's see. So that's really nice. So basically, when I first get them in, they, um, they get taken— my printmaker is— he doesn't live here, so we get them in, they live in these like racks unsigned until I sign and title everything by hand. Um, and then when they get packaged, they go over to these big-ass drawers over here, and we package everything with, you know, backboards clear bags and stuff. So then they get re-alphabetized as like packaged prints. So here's the A section. Giving away all my organizational secrets, but this is The Alchemist.

Yeah, I mean, alphabetization is probably not, uh, proprietary.

This is exclusive.

But I totally— Noel, I do think you are blowing the minds of how many artists see this.

Well, I don't believe in wasting much time. I don't. So when it comes— I mean, when I do an audit of like how our time is spent, and that's my time painting, that's my assistant's time, you know, shipping, packaging, print, framing, all that stuff, you know, we just thought through like any other business really, like what are the pain points here and just business ops. And actually what's really funny is my fiancé Taylor to bring him up again. He's @TBrizz on Instagram. He doesn't really use it, but he is the— he runs a— he's like the CEO of a— of his company, and all he does is like solve big structural challenges in his business. So when I have some kind of a challenge, um, to solve just organizationally or structurally, you know, it's really nice because we can sit down and like talk through what a solution would look like, and then he somehow scrapes together the time to like help me solve those problems on the weekends. Then we implement. So, um, good partnership. Yeah, it's great. So we've got like the, you know, elementary school cutter here because we cut a ton of backboards. And then we haven't really like filled this stuff out necessarily, but like a bunch of framing supplies. Um, we built these, we put this lovely butcher block surface on top of all of our workbenches. Just, you know, you need really big— you're in any like framing shop, and Laura's a great framer, she frames most of my work these days, but you need really big surfaces to frame efficiently. So we did that. I've got these great like canvas racks up here, and I'll take you back to my like storage shed too because it's, um, it's kind of impressive. Unless you need to bounce, you need to go.

Um, I think I can hang out for a while.

Okay, we'll just do a couple more minutes here.

Keep the rest of the space— okay, the storage, and then also like the artist studios.

Oh yeah, we'll do that. We still have one that we haven't rented yet too. So here's the back of our building. Um, we haven't put fencing up yet, it's still kind of a mess out here, but this shipping container is just storage for more of my stuff. There's no lighting in here yet, but it's just a shipping container. But, um, it's just like racks. It's like a storeroom back here, so that's great. It's basically— we kind of designed it to where, um, it's really messy right now. We're still working on organizing, but we kind of designed it to where, you know, all the backup stuff could live in here, and then stuff that needs to be on hand for what needs to be done that day, that goes and lives inside. Cool. Um, so we'll go back and then I'll show you some of the other artist studios.

What an amazing space. Congratulations on, uh, knocked out. And I mean, I think if there were a contest for, uh, organization—

yeah, thanks, George. And there's Fergus just chilling. He's like the best studio dog. Oh, here's like really quick Preview of, uh, some of my skis that are coming out with a super cool company in August. I haven't really shared those yet, so, uh, all right, so we'll go outside and, uh, hit up one of these studio spaces. So we're in Lakewood, it's about 15 minutes from Denver, and there's an art scene out here. But not a huge art scene. So I'm really excited to like put some art studios in here and get some other, other painters. We're still dealing with like structural issues out front with the parking lot, so we haven't filled these spaces yet, but we will. So we, we vaulted all these ceilings, put in like track lighting, skylights. They're about 18 feet high, I'd say. Um, and each of these studios has utility sinks again just to throw all your stuff in. And they have separate bathrooms, super great during COVID Yeah, and then they each have like these storage rooms in here, or let's see, or they could be like office, you know, whatever, your desk space. But yeah, so these turned out really great. The light is amazing in here. This— that is— and they have these loft spaces for storage. Um, that's south, so just So much light. Yeah, so much light. It's really nice.

Cool.

I think that's, um, I think that's the tour, George.

That's— you got like each space has its own like mini split.

Say that again.

Each space has its own mini split, uh, I guess. Is that heat or AC?

Oh yeah, they have their own heat and AC. I like to work in like 80 -degree environment. So, um, I don't know, I just— I think like temperature and light is— if you can control it, it's awesome. You'll control your own temperature and light. So we just— we had to like scrape this whole building, um, so we're like, let's just, you know, let's put in the things that we want that I think any artist would really like to have, or any— really any workspace. Good light, your own bathroom, your own access. Um, I don't know, and like some— something that's aesthetically pleasing enough to where you could show in these spaces if you wanted to.

Yeah, I think that's, that's a really good consideration. Um, I just had a question for you, and I forgot.

Lastly, yes, I'm always— people are always like, what's up with the Talenti jars? Favorite hack. Um, I just You know, I don't like using any paint straight out of the tube really almost ever, so I do a lot of like pre-mixing of, you know, some of my favorite colors in other containers, store them. You know, when I'm like working on a new big piece, I'll often like kind of pre-mix a lot of like the main shades that are not right out of the tube. And these will stay— these Talenti jars just stay shut for— they stay good for so long. And these are just acrylics. You can do this oil really, but I just keep these in here. It's awesome.

A lot of gelato.

Yeah, it's like an awesome excuse to write off my gelato.

Um, oh, that was my question. So when you said you, you like stripped the building, did it go down to like the cinder blocks and like a semblance of a roof or what?

Yeah, we went down to studs really. So it was underblocks for most of it. Yeah, we really replaced everything, you know. We kind of— it was an old building, it was built in the '50s, used to be a gun shop of all things. Um, I'm not very into guns, so we had to really erase any kind of, uh, evidence of that. But just the footprint was great for us. It's about half a mile from my house. I like to paint at like 3 AM, so we wanted something, you know, that was nice about working from home. I would I could paint till whenever. So to have an off-site studio, um, it was really ideal to have something really close to home. Yeah. So again, kind of what I brought from the beginning, just being able to sort of help cover costs for a space like this, just having rental space here.

Yeah.

This— the footprint of this place was great. It was just old, so we replaced plumbing, electric. We really replaced literally everything except the plumbing, which then we ended up having to replace place, which is why the parking lot's like a mud pit right now.

Yeah, I mean, I'm sure there were numerous challenges, but it seems like a good, uh, good example for artists to think big.

Yeah, I think I— that's good with this. I think, you know, you don't like— not that growth in terms of like being an artist, you don't have to think about it as business. But, you know, I definitely— I like to think I'm not a big believer in really solid long-term plans because things always change. But having big visions about like where you want to go— yeah, practice. Um, you know, I wanted to build space to grow into here, and that sort of— you like fulfill your own prophecy when you build for what you're hoping to do in the future.

Yeah.

You know, make space for it.

It's good.

Yes. So I don't know, you always need more space than you think too, I find.

That's— yeah, well, I mean, yeah, part of that is probably like the, like, whatever the law is, like the fluid dynamic law or something like— well, no, that's not fluid dynamics. That would be like it would just take the shape, but like, or no, we'll expand to take up the, this, you know, the space that's provided.

100%, and every guest will. Yeah, which is so much fixed, fixed density there. But, um, yeah, yeah, oh, you're totally right, George. So I don't know, there's a little— there's room to grow here. Um, I love to, you know, meet my collectors in person. And yeah, a lot of people even who want to buy prints who like want to come see stuff in person too. So it's pretty nice to have a space, um, to be able to comfortably have people, um, to show them what I'm working on and what, um, what we already have to offer and stuff. It helps. Great. Well, awesome, Noel.

Thank you so much for showing us around. Uh, what an amazing studio. So fun to see. And, you know, love the way that your work's been progressing. And, um, thrilled about these two pieces you have in In Rainbows.

So Cool.

Lots of checkboxes. Good job.

Awesome. It was really— yeah, someday I'll see your workspace, maybe.

My workspace right now.

What's behind you?

What's that?

What is behind you? Is that a painting?

That's me losing my tripod. Behind me, this is a—

oh no, that's Oh cool, that was my—

behind me I've got— it was just like a big sort of background. I started a painting and didn't finish it and it became a background for my Instagram Live. Um, got some artwork over here. Melanie Thompson, well, Victoria Gilmore, uh, first plein air thing I ever did.

Oh cool.

Um, house that I did, and then my son My son— this is really a crazy thing to try and do— uh, um, my son's painting.

That's awesome.

And then over here I've got a, uh, this is—

I should turn on the lights.

Uh, Luke Anderson. This one's gonna be in a show that, uh, he's got coming up. It's called Strobe.

Um, Beautiful.

Yeah, some other pieces. This is Chanel Cruisers, uh, my wife bought from Texas Women's Show.

Awesome.

That's one of my little Aspen studies, and then a Chloe, um, Gaillard watercolor, I guess.

Show you that. Like how diverse your art is.

Got a Maggiore drawing.

Is that an original?

Yeah.

Atta boy. Yeah. And here's my big mess. And then right over here. Awesome.

And that is Goldie.

Oh my God, is that a cat? Yeah. She could kick my dog's butt. Uh, yeah, maybe. She's great. Thank you.

All right, there you go. This time, this time we, we did it. I talked about myself.

Thanks, George.

Yeah, well, thanks for, thanks for chatting, Noel, and, um, hope to see you sometime in the not too terribly distant future.

Yeah, thanks for everyone who joined in too. It was fun. I'll do, um, anyone who's on my email list. I keep promising to do an opening here, but we just keep kind of pushing it off because because construction takes forever and, you know, stupid virus thing still haunting us. So I think late next month maybe, but get on my email list if you're local. Um, but nice to talk with you too. All right, talk to you later.

Ciao.