What's inside the Paneficio Studios?

Blogging the Culture Crawl: fourth of maybe seven.


I promised you a look inside the old bakery, the "Paneficio". I have written about it on a couple of previous occasions, with a photo or two of some of the storefront display, most recently here. But this is another of the working studios, not a gallery; we had never been inside.

Paneficio Studios houses 6 artists at the moment; we entered first through the door on the corner, where the old Paneficio sign hangs. Valerie Arntzen has this space. The display inside was similar to the crosses of baking tins that we had seen in the window earlier, but much more varied. She combines Mexican "milagros" and statuettes with bleached bones and found objects in a variety of containers as frames; a meditation, it seems to me, on mortality and hope. (I could be so far wrong that I'm not even in the same country, but that is what her work suggests to me.) This link will take you to her portfolio on Picasa.

I had wanted to talk to her, but she was giving an interview to a reporter the whole time we were there. Another day, maybe.


A bucket of found objects; supplies for future work, in the junction between Valerie's display area and the next artist's.


A painter's work space. Sharon Petty or Esther Rausenberg, I'm not sure which. More Mexican motifs.


A vase, something pink and feathery, broken bottles. And paint brushes.

This front room is divided into three "roomlets" or largish cubby holes. At the back, a door led out into a narrow hall or alley, still under the Paneficio roof, but seeming to be the passageway between buildings. floored with boards on mud, and now used for storage of old lumber and what's-its. It went on for a fair distance, then, just before a door opening onto a real alley, we found a studio door on our right. People were coming out; we went in.

We were in a large, open metal-working shop. Right in front of us, this coffee table held a card, giving the owner's name. Arnt Arntzen.


Arnt is a furniture designer, working in recycled wood and metal. He writes,

In this world of mass production, I feel it is important to design pieces that can not be mass produced. this is achieved by cutting my own wood from trees that have already been cut down and left to rot or from demolished buildings. Much of the metal comes from scrap yards or is found.

This studio fascinated me; I could have spent hours here, poking among the materials collected along the walls, hanging from the roof, jammed onto the benches. Or just admiring the finished and half-finished pieces; everything was so unexpected, but at the same time, just so right.

(I discovered something about artists: they use different lighting than we do. I had set my camera for indoor lighting, and most of my photos came out in strange colours, especially these. Looking later at Arnt's lighting fixtures, I realized that he used a mixture of fluorescent, tungsten, daylight from skylights, and what looks like surgery lights from a hospital. To get a true idea of what we saw this day, follow the links to the artists' galleries.)


Part of Arnt's workspace. Those tall, shiny things are propellers (airplane? boat?)


Wooden mice on a piece of machinery.


A half-finished chair, made of one of those propellers, hanging from the ceiling. You can see three varieties of lighting in this photo.


Unfinished wooden bowls shoved under a rack.


More stuff hanging from the ceiling.


A little side table.

Arnt also makes the "totems" that I have shown before; there was an unfinished one in a corner.

But there were 300 artists to see; I dragged myself away. Out into the hallway/alley, out the door to the lane, back to the street. Around the building, passing a door to other studio spaces, closed at the moment.


Door #2 of the Paneficio.

And around the corner, to doors #3 and 4:


One of Arnt's totems, outside the studio of Jordan Bent, painter.

Jordan's studio was an amazing experience; painting after painting, in vivid, Mexican colours, incorporating the familiar and the fantastic to create worlds unknown, each telling a story that grew and changed as you looked.

His website explains that, "His work is an exploration of longing, a detail of searching, an illustration of the weight of duty."

I took one photo, and a helper came over to ask me to desist. He did give me permission to use this one on my blog, however. It doesn't begin to do justice to the painting; I should never have used the flash on high-gloss paint.


So: all in all, beautiful work, lousy photography. Next year, I'll do better.