September 2023 Newsletter
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Studio 1.0: This photo was taken during our Grand Opening of the Fort Lauderdale, FL Space in 2014
Studio 2.0: This Photo was taken during our 9th Anniversary Party this Past Weekend
9 years ago…
I was in the studio with my mom, dad, and grandma building tables. We brought my grandma because we thought it would be more fun for her than sitting at home but she spent most of the day asking, “Who said you have to build so many tables?”
She was the entrepreneur in the family. She moved from Norway to Denmark at 19, the only member of her family to leave the small town of Moi where the rest of the family still resides. She moved to the US at 34 after getting married and having two babies in Montreal, CA. She had dinner with Andy Warhol once because he was dating the man who lived in the apartment below hers.
When I asked her why she left Norway and how she wound up in Boca Raton, FL of all places, she told me “I hate it when my eyeballs get cold.” She had a furniture store in Boca at one point which was written up in the paper for her fantastic lampshade-making skills.
By the time I was born, her main profession was buying and selling antique dolls. She would pick me up every day after school and I would help her restring dolls or climb the trees in her backyard. She encouraged my artistic inclinations and let me be the weird little rascal that I needed to be to become who I am today.
My middle name is Signy, after her. She didn’t get to spend much time in the studio but she had an outsized impact on it. Her tenacity, energy, and laugh are part of the spirit that makes this studio the magical place that it is.
We’re still here, the tables are too (and yes, we needed all of them.) So this year for our anniversary, I wanted to honor Signy Schindall and tell y’all a little bit about her. Thanks for reading. Thank you so much for your support. Here’s to Signy and here’s to 9 more years!
- Ingrid Schindall
Sign up before Sunday to $ave
What better way to celebrate the fact that the studio is still going strong than to come in and learn something new?
To celebrate, we are offering a 20% discount on all workshops from now through Sunday. The discount code is 9YEARS and it expires at 11:59PM so don’t delay!
All the workshops we have planned through December are finally published, and we’ve got some our favorites back on the schedule (Screenprinting Intensive and Intro to Print), as well as a few fresh new ones! Come learn how to make your own screenprinting ink with coffee, get started in a new print process, or dive deep into color fundamentals. You can explore the whole batch at our Classes + Events page.
Our featured course this month is Modern Letterpress taught by Ingrid Schindall. After lots of requests, she’s put together a course that will be great to get you started in letterpress — one of the most unique print processes we offer here in Miami. It’s an intimate course and there are only a few spots, so if you’re thinking about signing up, we’d suggest you just go for it! No previous experience required, but we’re sure there’s lots you can learn in this course even if it’s not your first brush with a Vandercook.
It feels good to be a regular
Folks have been working on some SUPER ambitious prints in here lately. There’s no better time to be in here printing if you’re looking for ambitious studio camaraderie. Come try the hard thing you’ve been contemplating!
If you don’t want to overthink your time with us, check out our monthly Studio Pass, which is open only to our Studio Members. The passes allow you to pre-pay for all the studio rental and Open Studio Sessions you can squeeze into the month you buy it for.
Just get in touch if you have any questions or want us to show you around.
Artists’ Book Feature: Nearing
This month, we’re spotlighting Nearing by the incredible Jen Clay!
Clay has just debuted her video game, Eyes of the Skin, at Locust Projects here in Miami, and we were absolutely delighted by how beautifully it builds on all the things we loved about Nearing when it was produced in 2017.
The thread through Clay’s rigorous interdisciplinary practice is her ability to reveal some of the hardest truths through far-flung fictions, drawing attention to what we can and cannot admit we’ll believe in both. Nearing, much like Eyes of the Skin, explores the gray and messy aspects of navigating mental illness and unhealthy relationships through the lens of her weird fictional cryptid world.
When it was published, the book accompanied a series of performances by Clay conducted with the support of the Girls Club Collection in Fort Lauderdale, FL and allows readers to revisit to feelings and topics it stirred over and over again.
You can play Clay’s game in her stunning and soft installation in Locust Projects’ Project Room from now through November 4th. Be sure to consider visiting for her Scooby-Doo monster chase inspired “Fun Run” on October 21st or to take Sam Lopez de Victoria’s free beginner-friendly workshop on October 24th on the software that Clay used to build her game.
Clay’s many years of focused and intense artmaking have been gaining greater and greater recognition since her Oolite Studio Art Residency (2020-2022). She is now represented by Emerson-Dorsch Gallery here in Miami, and we are delighted to see her work is reaching and connecting with expanded audiences the longer we watch. We are so grateful to be a part of her practice (and to be her friends!) and we wanted to be sure we took this opportunity to make this highly portable piece of her practice more visible to our community while her work is still on view here for both the locals who want to take a little Jen home with them, and for the folks who can’t make it who wish that they could.