This week I returned to Studio 109A after about a three month leave. The Artspace I returned to is a very different place than the one I left. First of all, so many of my friends have left the building (literally). There will be no more group lunches, birthdays in the hallway, or cakes made of tin making the rounds from artist to artist.

The studios downstairs are now filled with new faces, emerging and established Artists, who bring their own perspectives to Artspace. When I first moved into the building seven years ago, I was the only jeweler in the building. Although there had been jewelers working at Artspace before me, the sounds and smells radiating from my studio were somewhat unfamiliar, and I would venture to say, disturbing to the artists around me. Today, there are four other jewelers in the building, all of  whom have studios down the hall from Studio 109A.  Sandra McEwan and Sara West moved in this summer. Megan Clark, who has been at Artspace over a year, moved from her shared studio upstairs to her own studio space downstairs.

Textile Artist Mary Kircher is the current Regional Emerging Artist downstairs. She is joined by two other Regional Emerging Artists (Nancy VanNoppen and Scott Welsh). Andre Leon Gray and Emily Howard also moved into the building as The Community Artists in Residence. The Summer Artist in Residence is  Jonathan Brilliant, working in Gallery One.

Of course, there are still remnants of my friends, great artists who I have come to respect and know, lingering in the hallway, the lobby, and The Upfront Gallery. If you happen to make it downtown in the next couple of days, don’t miss Catherine Thornton’s solo exhibition, Talking Heads, a humorous commentary in clay on today’s election cycle. Also, be sure to catch Marriott Little’s Four Decades of Art exhibition, a retrospective highlighting her forty year career. And you can still find Ann Harwell’s work displayed outside her old studio, as well as Addison Paige’s art quilt hanging outside of Studio 109A.

I must say, the day I returned to Artspace, all of the changes were a bit unsettling. As the week has passed though, I have seen some of the old, familiar faces and have reacquainted myself with Studio 109A. It is true that the only constant is change. I believe how we react to the change reflects our character. It would be easy for me to be fearful, angry or even paralyzed by all of the changes around me. However, in the last couple of days, I made a conscious decision to embrace change and live by the immortal words of Alan Watts: “The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.”