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Kolkata Blue • David Lurvey

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A studio visit with Ron Jude

photographs by David Lurvey

Where is your studio exactly and how long have you been working there? Our studio is in the Fall Creek neighborhood of Ithaca, NY. It’s about a six-minute walk from our house. We’ve been in this space since August of 2011. It’s the first real studio I’ve ever had. In the past I always used a spare bedroom in whatever house I was living in as my “studio”.

What are the pros and cons of your studio? The main pro is having a defined work-space, without domestic distractions. When I’m there, it’s work time, and I’ve found I’m more productive in this space. Another big pro is having a place where I can make large-format prints without having to set-up and break-down every time I have a printing session. I always used to use the facilities (printers, etc.) at whatever college or university I happened to be teaching at. This is a great fringe benefit to teaching, but ultimately it’s a real pain in the neck sharing your work-space with dozens of students. It’s really nice not worrying about what condition the equipment is going to be in every time I need to make a print. The downside is that our studio seems a bit cluttered and small these days. I bought a big printer about a year ago and the studio got much smaller once I started making big prints in there. The downside to owning your own equipment is the maintenance. I have to keep a humidifier running in the studio 24 hours a day in the winter so the nozzles on the printer don’t dry up and clog. It’s a real pain.

How many hours do you usually spend there per week? It’s a pretty standard 40-hour work-week in the studio when I’m not teaching (summers, breaks). When I’m teaching, like right now, it’s much less. I have a couple of afternoons and mornings, all day Friday, and about 6-8 hours each weekend that I can spend in the studio. It’s very limiting and drives me crazy most weeks. I’ve got a couple of shows I’m preparing for right now that I’m having a hard time finishing. But, it’ll get done. It always does.

Do you have your own daily routine within the studio? For example, do you usually start by answering your emails then get to work etc? The first order of business, every day, is to figure out what music I’m going to listen to while I’m working (unless I’m writing, in which case I can’t listen to music). The next thing I do is I run a nozzle-check on my printer. I do this whether or not I’m actually going to be doing any printing that day. Otherwise, I think it’s different every day, depending on what’s on the list of things to do. I usually put email off until later in the day because if I start in on that first thing, half the day is gone before I get any real work done. It’s often the case that I’ll put email off long enough that I run out of time, and it gets pushed to the next day. Email is such a time suck – I dread looking at my inbox most days!

Are there things you deliberately forbid yourself to do/have within the studio in order to be more productive? As I mentioned, I can’t listen to music when I’m writing. Otherwise, no, I don’t really have any rules about that sort of thing. I suppose limiting my time on the internet would be helpful, but I’m not that puritanical about things.

Do you sometimes wish you shared your studio with one or a few other artists? I share my studio with Danielle Mericle (my wife). It’s sort of the perfect arrangement because we’re rarely there at the same time. We have a four year-old son, so when we work on the weekends (which is pretty much every weekend), we switch back and forth between parental duties and studio time. When we are at the studio together, there’s no opinion I trust more than hers. Danielle vets pretty much everything I make at some point during production. She’s the perfect studio mate. As far as the cons go, you’d have to ask her about that. I’m kind of a space hog and I tend to take the studio over at times. There are no cons for me.

What is your favorite track to edit photos to? My tastes in music tend to vary, depending on what I'm working on. While I was working on the layout for Lick Creek Line, for instance, I listened to this piece by Henryk Górecki over and over again:

I listened to a lot of classic rock while I was working on emmett:

And lately, whenever I get the chance to work on Lago, I've been listening to a lot of God Speed You! Black Emperor. I listen to this a lot when I'm in the desert shooting, too. Something about it suits the sweltering heat. (I really love this track. Unfortunately it got turned into a movie soundtrack a while back, which diminished its potential for surprise a bit, but I still like it):

for more or Ron's work, please visit www.ronjude.com

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