Sleeping Dog Studio
Robin Ashook
Robin Ashook
Robin .... and those sleeping dogs
All my life I've been taken with old things and odd things and beautiful things. I love them for the stories they hold but don't quite tell. The whole time I was getting my undergraduate and graduate degrees in printmaking and painting, my real passion was for things . Even as a painter I made my watercolor work into wearable jewelry, and my oil paintings were of groupings of objects. Things ...
A few years ago I bought a wonderful vintage lamp base and then faced the challenge of finding an appropriate shade. It was virtually impossible. New shades were all wrong, and vintage shades were mostly long-perished. Finally, I decided I would make one - it had to be like soft sculpture, right? Surely I could figure it out. That, as they say, changed everything.
I hadn't really known where I was heading all those years, but I sure recognized it when I got there. Fabrics, linens, wallpapers, trims, ribbons, images, ephemera -- all the "stuff:" that caught my imagination and I'd felt compelled to have and keep -- suddenly, it all made perfect sense.
I don't know if I'm an artist or a designer, but I am a maker of beautiful things. They are inspired by the spirit of stories past, but they are firmly rooted in the feelings, hopes, dreams and joys of the present.
The dogs of Sleeping Dog Studio - clockwise from the bottom - Rudy, Rose (with Blanche the cat), and Guinness.
Rudy - "Rudyard Pupling, Rudd, Rudy the Wonder Dog,"- he was a big personality with human friends entirely of his own making. He was my constant and slept right behind me, just inches from my heels, as I worked. I couldn't step backwards without turning first so I could step over him. It was years after he was gone before I stopped turning first before I moved. He was such a defining and vibrant part of my world and work that it seemed only right the studio should be named for him. So it was.
Rose was a rescued girl. A hunting dog who was gun-shy, she was treated badly and finally left behind in the woods to fend for herself. When I got her, neither the shelter, the vet, nor I realized she was pregnant and she gave birth to eight puppies just weeks after she arrived. A sweeter and truer soul never lived - everything about her was soft. Blanche - (the cat), eh, not so much - she was a cranky girl, but lovable in spite of herself.
Guinness is the Jack Russell who oversees the studio now. He has two speeds, full tilt and crash. He's ball-obsessed and bedeviled by the local rabbit and squirrel population. Despite his rodent-murdering ambitions, he's possessed of a soul-piercing goodness and he makes me laugh out loud every day. He is sleeping beside me as I write this.
Rudy - "Rudyard Pupling, Rudd, Rudy the Wonder Dog,"- he was a big personality with human friends entirely of his own making. He was my constant and slept right behind me, just inches from my heels, as I worked. I couldn't step backwards without turning first so I could step over him. It was years after he was gone before I stopped turning first before I moved. He was such a defining and vibrant part of my world and work that it seemed only right the studio should be named for him. So it was.
Rose was a rescued girl. A hunting dog who was gun-shy, she was treated badly and finally left behind in the woods to fend for herself. When I got her, neither the shelter, the vet, nor I realized she was pregnant and she gave birth to eight puppies just weeks after she arrived. A sweeter and truer soul never lived - everything about her was soft. Blanche - (the cat), eh, not so much - she was a cranky girl, but lovable in spite of herself.
Guinness is the Jack Russell who oversees the studio now. He has two speeds, full tilt and crash. He's ball-obsessed and bedeviled by the local rabbit and squirrel population. Despite his rodent-murdering ambitions, he's possessed of a soul-piercing goodness and he makes me laugh out loud every day. He is sleeping beside me as I write this.
