Mary Collins stands outside the yellow barn door marking her studio at the Claremont Art Studios at 1515 S. Claremont St., near the street’s southern terminus.
With brightly colored animal figurines and spools of thread adorning the rafters and walls of their San Mateo studio, the space where sisters and artists Jill and Lorna Watt have been working for the last four years is as imaginative as the crafts and street art they create from yarn.
Including stuffed yarn animals and public trees and benches wrapped with yards of colorful knitted coverings, the duo’s work has turned heads for going far beyond the knitted accessories one might expect expert needle crafters to produce. From transforming a tree trunk and branches into the bright blue arms of a squid in downtown San Mateo to securing the faces of cute monsters on the benches outside San Francisco’s Ferry Building, the Watts’ art installations have spanned miles of surface area in locations across the Bay Area.
Mary Collins stands outside the yellow barn door marking her studio at the Claremont Art Studios at 1515 S. Claremont St., near the street’s southern terminus.
Anna Schuessler/Daily Journal
So for the Watts, getting the chance to spread their work out in one of 12 studios at the Claremont Art Studios at 1515 S. Claremont St. allows them to keep pace with their expanding portfolio of projects. Surrounded by spools of yarn in every color imaginable and rows of neatly arranged pairs of scissors, knitting and crocheting needles, the sister team knows they’ve collected a wide range of materials for their all-encompassing projects over the years.
“We have too much yarn,” joked Jill Watt, who lives in Foster City while her sister Lorna Watt lives in San Mateo. “If we didn’t have a place … there’s no way we’d be able to fit all the stuff in our houses.”
When the sisters simultaneously rediscovered a passion for knitting and crocheting some six years ago, they were focused on making small toys and gifts, such as stuffed animals and ornaments, as well as patterns allowing other artists to reproduce their creations. But their inventiveness soon brought them to experiment with a different sort of project, the kind transforming an everyday item like a mailbox into an imaginary creature with birdlike feet protruding from its legs.
It wasn’t until they discovered a concept called “yarnbombing” on the internet a few years ago that they realized their penchant for piquing the public’s imagination had a name, and that they would need a more dedicated working space, not only to fit all of their materials, but also to inspire and motivate them to continue their work.
“It helps you give your craft respect and the space to focus on it,” said Lorna Watt.
In a studio across the hall from the Watts, painter Mary Collins works on a wide range of projects, everything from mixed media projects with textured paper to color-filled abstract paintings. In the 10 years Collins, who is retired, has focused on her artwork, she said she struggled to find the space and quiet to make progress with her projects in her Foster City home. So when she was able to begin renting a studio at the Claremont Art Studios about a year ago, Collins was excited about the possibilities the new space would bring.
“It’s great that I was able to clean out my garage,” she said, adding that she had previously tried working out of an empty space in a larger office building. “People were on the phones all day, I wasn’t inspired.”
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In the bright showroom in the front of the building facing Claremont Street, artists have been able to show their work in private shows and also with anyone who walks into the studios, said Collins. She added the collaborative community working on portraits, photography and abstract art, among other types of projects, plays a big role in how much she enjoys working in the space, among other similarly focused on their artwork.
Though Kevin Phillips, the landlord for the studios, has experience managing other commercial and residential projects, setting up the 5,559-square-foot space for artists was a first. When he and his partners bought the building in 2012, they had no intention of creating studios but, because it was zoned for high-density housing, soon found their options were limited when it came to transforming the building, which formerly housed a donation drop-off for the nonprofit Samaritan House.
Having seen interesting clusters of artist studios at other locations across the Bay Area, Phillips said he and his partners decided to see what it would be like to organize the space into three 250-square-foot and nine 200-square-foot studios. Since they started renting the spaces to artists in 2013, Phillips said he’s been overwhelmed by the interest in them from those working on silkscreen T-shirts, architectural projects and metal-working, among other artwork.
“We love this building, we love the project,” he said. “We think it’s just a really cool thing for the community.”
Though the studios are available for rent on a month-to-month basis, Phillips said many of the artists who work there currently have stayed for years and tend to be part-time artists or hobbyists. By renting them out at rates around $500 to $600 a month, Phillips is hoping they continue to find the space they need to continue their work at affordable rates.
And for artists like Collins, just a little bit of freedom from the practicalities of the work can make all the difference.
“There’s no distractions,” she said. “It’s totally so easy to spend hours here.”
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knitting needles. crochet hooks.
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Keep it clean. Please avoid obscene, vulgar, lewd, racist or sexually-oriented language.
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PLEASE TURN OFF YOUR CAPS LOCK.
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