The beginning of my experience working with Carolina Silva has been a long start in working on a time-consuming and meditative project. On my first day, I arrived in the studio at 9 a.m. fresh off the water from my morning row and still slightly damp from being waked by tug boats. Carolina’s studio is conveniently located directly across the canal from the boathouse that I row out of in the Lake Washington Ship Canal, which gives me a new appreciation for the location of the Ballard Bridge. I found her studio in a small and eclectic building composed of winding hallways and creaking floor boards. The room she occupies is small but bright, with windows that open the space with soft white light of an overcast morning.
We talk about the work I like to do and what she has been working on, coming to the conclusion that we are both presently fascinated with textures. She had a studio visit scheduled for after our meeting so some of her recent works were laid out on a table; a mix of ceramic plates and vases as well as ceramic pennants and branches crowded the table.
After talking and helping her organize the space for some time, we sat down and started working on what will most likely be my project with her for the remainder of the quarter; pulling small pieces of clay from a bag of remnants and scraps of white clay and rolling them into round beads, punching a hole from the center, and repeating the process until I had amassed a full bowl of beads and a handful left on the table. I found this to be a meditative process, a feeling Carolina shares with me in making the beads. This will be my time to think and to talk about what it is like to be a practicing artist and what I want to do with all that I have learned and participated in over the past few years.
~Brooke McCulloch, ’15
Seattle University Artist Assistantship Program 