Lighting and shop design

[abknight@zzzzzz]

Hi Norman,

Didn't mean to be so negative about the windows; sorry about your basement
thing.

I moved to the country eight years ago and became the owner of 24 by 32
foot garage type out building with a mildly pitched rool and a conrete
pad.  I proceded to start a shop.  I had had a windowless painting studio
in the city previously and was exicted to get away from flat incandescent
light in to the round glowing light of nature, especially since my
interests had moved into sculpture from painting.  I started improving the
light in the dark shop by adding windows.  I turned a whole wall into
windows that I could swing open to let breezes in and have tthe feeling of
beeing outside.  Then I started cuttting skylights in the roof and
replaced the tin with clear polycarbonate which has a lifetime of about
five years.  Then I liked it so much I replaced about the whole roof with
polycarbonate.  Wonderful splendid light--vibrating--seething!  Then I had
too much light.  I put a tarp over the whole thing in the hot summer and I
had to hang vertical sheets of material to block the low angle raking
lights of winter.  It's just impossible work when half of your work has
blindng sun on it.

Later I became involved in a figural project where I developed a very
exacting maquette.  It was very light dependent.  The light from my
windows would undermine the shadow scheme from the skylight and wash out
the form.  So I covered them up and don't regret it.  I'm a shrunken up
prune I guess and don't go to the shop to smell the roses much any more,
but to see if I can possibly get any work done.  Over head florescent
light would absolutely destroy the illusion of human form that I had
worked so hard on by daylight, as would my more lateral incandescent
lighting.  Recently desceased Walker Hancock who was perhaps the U.S.'s
leading figurative sculptor wrote vividly of disasterous lighting
installations in his memoir "A Sculptor's Fortunes". I am a daytime only
worker, insofar as I do any work at all.

Hope that explains some of my attitude, but I do think the tradition of
the northern skylight has a real basis in quality and workablity.  And I
am not at all against outdoor.  Outdoor where its brightest is where see
best and things are much clearer to me there.

All the best, Norman, in whatever type of studio you build!

Bill