Monday, April 20, 2009

Audra Loyal/The Vespiary: shedworker

Continuing our series looking at shedworkers and their shedworking, Audra Loyal talks Shedworking through her garden office life (lots of photos of the build are also at her Flickr page:
I'm a fairly recent transplant to Missoula, having lived previously in California, Oregon and Japan. I came to Montana as a resident of The Clay Studio of Missoula, and then moved my ceramic equipment into the small shed. It's probably as old as my house (about 105 years old - ancient for this part of the country), but probably owes its continued existence (without a significant foundation) to the extremely dry climate here. Most of the studs were rotted off at the bottom.

Now, though, my focus has shifted to bookbinding and conservation.Last year I started my private conservation business, The Vespiary Book Restoration & Bindery. I called my business The Vespiary because a) my shed was infested with wasps and b) wasps work with clay and paper, just like me! Up till now I used one of the rooms in my house as a workshop, but have rapidly outgrown it. I'm really looking forward to having an entire structure dedicated to this craft.

A friend of ours is the contractor and we've been trying to use mainly recycled or local materials. We have a great recycled building store called Home Resource where lately we managed to score a great skykight. Our floorboards are locally harvested circle-sawn fir. We'll be picking up wool insulation from Sugar Loaf Mill soon. We've yet to find siding, but have a few leads.I'm hoping the project will be completed by the end of May, and will be updating my blog through the whole process.

My Etsy shop is currently a little thin right now because of the work on the shed, but is typically stocked with blank journals and notebooks made from recycled maps and Japanese chiyogami paper.
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