Ryan Fitzer

The new and somewhat smaller studio | Click image to view larger

Been wanting to update the site for some time but I been in the midst of a huge move from Dallas to Los Angeles. It was a real bear to find a place within our price range as LA is way more fu@&ing expensive than good ole’ Dallas. The new place is 800 sq. ft. and runs $1145 a month compared with 1000 sq. ft. for $725. Luckily it came with a fridge (not so common in LA I hear), but sans central heating and air (unlike the Dallas apt.). The lone heater (pictured behind my tool box above) isn’t as much of a problem (Elizabeth feels differently) but the lack of AC was a real problem when the temp was 94° a little while ago (with western exposure!).

So far, LA has been great. Getting settled has taken some time but we’re almost done. I plan on getting to work in my new studio this week. Which brings me to the subject of this post. My studio practice as been highly neglected for some time now (I hate saying how long). My focus has been on learning web development and starting my one man show, PortfolioRodeo. I won’t go into detail about the business except to say that it’s my freelance web development business focusing on websites for artists.

As we all know, it takes money to be an artist and my (former) day job as a gallery director wasn’t cutting it. As a result, I decided to use my studio time to earn extra money making websites. This turned into a real time sucker and I also found that I was using coding as an excuse to not work in my studio as it was much easier to be successful as a web developer than an artist.

Since the move I have gotten to the point where I think I can better balance the two. The business is doing well and I’m a much better developer than I once was. Now the hard part starts.

Where do I start? Having to pack up one’s studio can be pretty eye-opening. Things you’ve held onto for so long believing they would become useful suddenly become extra weight with the thought of dragging them 1500 miles. The cleansing effect is enormous. I was immediately able to valuate something when space and labor were at a premium as opposed to before when I could just stuff it away somewhere.

There was a flip side as well. Finished and unfinished works that I had grown indifferent about became instantly invaluable. I dug up a lot of things that I had started but never finished for lack of head space. This is where I’ll be starting. I’m not necessarily jazzed about all the unfinished work but I have to start somewhere and this is a place as good as any.

I also have older work to post in the portfolio section of the site. I just haven’t had much time. It’s sometimes hard to see the value of past work when my current work is so different. This also, of course, gives me time to get far enough away from previous work to realize the commonalities it has with more recent work (more like a kick in the head than a “realization”).

So look forward to that. As always though, I’ve been pretty active with the photoblog. Just posted over 50 new images starting here.