'Shed Of Wonders' - Artist Studio Shed

Features

This is my art studio shed where I make theatre puppets, sculptures, fairground games and repair my beehives. It is also a sort of natural history museum and creative archive. The shed is in three parts, as it has been extended over much of my back garden as I have built new spaces and it is largely made from reclaimed building materials and windows retrieved from skips. The back space is largely storage for bones and natural history specimens (*all ethically sourced from roadkill, food-markets and hedgerow and tide-line finds), the middle space is built around a large plan chest desk for drawings and a surface for winter work and the workshop space and outside workbench are where I ‘make things’.

Other info

The shed is all scratch built from found materials and although I did buy some timber and concrete it is largely made from reclaimed skip finds and then weatherproofed with black painted shiplap and tongue&groove, echoing the fisherman's sheds I love on the South coast and Norfolk. The large shelved back room was the first proper shed space I built after leaving my studio @spikeislandstudios in Bristol a decade ago. In fact I first built a quicker plywood structure initially to try to store everything but it leaked so I stepped up my game here, digging down a meter to give me more height, putting in a concrete floor and building brick walls to support a timber frame and tiled roof. This area is mainly where I store things now as I then built on an extension, and then another more recent workshop space where I hammer, glue and saw. I have been tidying up the studio this week after the work on a bee diorama sculpture and recent puppet making for a theatre production of the 'Wizard of Oz'. (*mechanical crows, blue-birds, a cow and a hen - photos on my IG account) This week I have also built a new outside table from wood found in a skip, so that I can sort out the spring beehive woodwork. Stuff is always everywhere after a build and it’s good getting things back in order and now I am going to finish the museum cabinet artwork for an art exhibition in the summer.

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Web: https://sharkcage.wixsite.com/duncancameron