The Studio as a System

Digital Art Goes Rogue September 2023

I’ve been circling an idea I thought I had put to rest, publishing another magazine. Not a glossy one and not trend-driven, not another place shouting inspiration at artists who are already overwhelmed and behind before they even start. What keeps resurfacing is something slower, quieter, more deliberate, something that feels less like content and more like a place to land.

 
I’m a maker first, an artist. I don’t really think of myself as a writer, even though writing keeps insisting on showing up in my life. I write the way I sketch, to think, to notice, to work something out rather than to perform it. Writing, for me, is not about producing something polished but about paying attention, about catching the edges of an idea, the muse, before it disappears. And maybe that’s exactly why this magazine idea won’t leave me alone. I am not REALLY looking for something else to do. I have the Canteen project that I am wrapping up, Common Ground and the Bali residency and the normal, spontaneous, bohemian, unscripted experimental work in the studio.

 
Lately I’ve been paying closer attention to how my days actually unfold in the studio, not the romantic version I tell myself or others, but the real one. On a normal creative day, I move back and forth between analog and digital without much anxiety. I work with physical materials that resist me, stain my hands, and slow my thinking in ways I have come to trust. I also work on a screen, sometimes with AI open beside me, not to replace the work but to help me see around corners I couldn’t see alone. I’m constantly managing energy, doubt, comparison, momentum, and distraction. Flow doesn’t just happen anymore, at least not accidentally. It’s something I have to set the conditions for, protect, and sometimes fight for.

 
That, I think, is the real curriculum of being an artist right now. It’s certainly my daily reality, and I suspect it’s the reality for many others as well. What’s interesting to me is that this curriculum isn’t being taught very well anywhere, at least not that I can find. We talk endlessly about tools, techniques, platforms, and output, but very little about how artists actually live inside their studios today, cognitively, emotionally, physically, and digitally.

Digital Pain Magazine Cover March 2010

Artists don’t need more inspiration. We are drowning in it. What we need is integration. We need fewer decisions and better decisions. We need ways to feel less behind, less broken, less like everyone else got the memo except us. Most artists I know are quietly asking the same questions, even if they don’t always say them out loud. How do I use AI without losing my voice? Should I use it at all? Is it a crutch or maybe even cheating? How do I slow down when everything around me is optimized for speed? How do I stay embodied when half my work happens on a screen? How do I get into flow reliably instead of accidentally? How do I stop comparing when the feed never ends? How can I be myself and create authentically without feeling like I’m constantly chasing or defending something?

 
Those aren’t technical questions. They’re studio questions, nervous system questions, identity questions. And that’s where this magazine idea starts to make sense again, not as a publication that tells artists what to make and not simply as a showcase of finished work, although I love eye candy as much as anyone. What keeps pulling at me is the idea of a slow studio magazine for artists who are trying to survive and thrive inside a very strange moment. 

I keep thinking of it as a place to explore the contemporary artist’s studio as a system. A place where analog and digital collaborate instead of compete, where AI is treated as a thinking partner rather than a shortcut or a threat, where materials are allowed to carry memory and resistance, and where the nervous system matters as much as technique. Inside that space live tensions that every artist I know is navigating, whether they name them or not. Speed versus slowness. Control versus play. Originality versus influence. Skill versus voice. Isolation versus community. Human judgment versus machine assistance.

AI images that represent the types of images I was creating in 1980 for the fashion magazine

Those tensions show up everywhere. They show up in mixed media, in wax and resin, in digital workflows, in teaching, and in self-doubt. They show up in my own work daily. A magazine doesn’t have to resolve those tensions. It can hold them. It can examine them. It can give artists language, frameworks, and practical ways to make fewer decisions and better ones.

 
Monthly feels right to me. Slow enough to breathe and intentional enough to matter. Something you don’t scroll past, something you sit with. Something that respects the reader’s intelligence and time rather than competing for attention.
I don’t know the name yet, and I don’t honestly know for sure that I will create and publish it. I’m oddly comfortable with that uncertainty. What I do know is the purpose, if it does come to fruition. To help artists feel less fragmented. To help them trust their judgment again. To remind them that the work is not just what they produce, but how they live inside the making.

 
Maybe a magazine is the ticket, and maybe it isn’t. Not because it’s nostalgic, but because it creates a rhythm, a pause, a place to think. And right now, that feels like a very practical thing to create. I’ve published three magazines in my life so far, which makes this idea feel less hypothetical than it might otherwise. Way back in the day, as a twenty-year-old kid stationed in Norfolk, Virginia, I published a fashion magazine. That’s a different story for a different time, but I’ll admit my motives weren’t exactly pure. I wanted to photograph models without having to pay models. What I ended up learning was headshots, commercial fashion photography, and dance, and I think I published that magazine for about two years before selling it.

Digital Paint Magazin Cover Aprtil 2010

The next was Digital Paint Magazine, a really fun publication focused on teaching people how to interpret and paint from their photographs using Photoshop, Corel Painter, and other software that was popular at the time. That magazine eventually morphed into DAC, Digital Art Creation, and I published those online for more than ten years. The most recent attempt was short-lived. Digital Art Goes Rogue, DAGR, was intended to teach what I call fusion artistry, the combination of digital, AI, and traditional media. I only published four months. I honestly can’t remember exactly why I stopped, although I suspect it had a lot to do with working seventy-hour weeks while trying to teach, create art, and keep everything else afloat. That was in 2023.

 
I’m thinking out loud here, already imagining how my days might fill once I retire. I know I’ll miss the human component, the daily interaction with people. There are so many projects waiting in the wings. Important ones. Finishing and organizing the studio, the woodshop, and the metal shop. Finishing the house, where several big projects have been partially done for years. Becoming more intentional with the garden, not just for food but as an art garden, a place for inspiration, motivation, and materials.

 
Somewhere in all of that, this idea of a magazine keeps resurfacing, not as an obligation but as an invitation. A way to stay in conversation. A way to keep thinking alongside other artists who are trying to make sense of this moment without losing themselves in the noise. And maybe that’s enough, at least for now. Let me know what you think.

AI images that represent the types of images I was creating in 1980 for the fashion magazine