Art Studio America: Contemporary Artist Spaces, is a sumptious, heavily illustrated look at the studios of artists across America, from Los Angeles to New York City and points in between. Robin Friend's excellent photographs reveal the spaces where creation happens, sometimes in an urban loft, sometimes in a converted warehouse, and sometimes in an old barn or outbuilding in the mountains or the desert. Copious interviews with each artist explore the idea of inspiration and where it originates, the role of place in an artist's work and how place can change an artist's direction, the effects of fame and neglect, and the importance of having room and security to work.
'Art Studio America: Contemporary Artist Spaces' by Hossein Amirsadeghi; executive editor: Maryam Eisler; essays by Robert Storr, Benjamin Genocchio, and Mark Godfrey; photography by Robin Friend. 600 pages, Thames & Hudson, $95.
TransGlobe Publishing from Art Studio America: Contemporary Artist Spaces published by Thames & Hudson
Marilyn Minter in her studio in New York City's garment district.
Born in Ethiopia and raised in the United States, artist Julie Mehretu is shown relaxing in the private quarters of her New York City studio in Chelsea, overlooking the Hudson River.
Chuck Close at work in his New York City studio in Noho. Wheelchair-bound since 1988, when he suffered a spinal artery collapse, he paints by attaching a brush to a wrist harness and raising and lowering the canvas with a pulley.
Jeff Koons holds a blue gazing ball, a component of his most recent series, Gazing Ball. The artist affixes the blue-mirrored globes to plaster casts of various subjects.
Kiki Smith has lived and worked in her Manhattan townhouse since 1996, and even kept bees on the roof at one point.
Richard prince in one of the studios on his 500-acre estate in the Catskill Mountains. He is seated in front of a collection of nurses' hats, which he collects (among other things) and which reference his Nurse Paintings.
The hands of Rackstraw Downes, thumbing through a notebook he carries everywhere. Much of Downes's work is painted out of doors and on site. He spends four months of the year in a rented house on the edge of Presidio, Texas, and the rest of the year in a loft studio in New York City.
Lorna Simpson in the four-story Vanderbilt studio in Brooklyn that was designed by British architect David Adjaye and which she shares with her husband, the artist James Casebere.
John Currin with recent work in his loft studio in New York City's Flatiron District, not far from the Gramercy park townhouse that he shares with his wife, the artist Rachel Feinstein, who is also his principal model and muse.
Kaz Oshiro spray painting in his East Los Angeles studio. He often refashions everyday objects, including such things as washing machines and guitar amps, into artworks.
Theaster gates lives and works in Dorchester, Chicago, a predominantly African American neighborhood that is a ten-minute drive from the affluent neighborhood surrounding the University of Chicago, where he teaches.
