Interview with Darcy Corbett
Wanda: When did you start making art?
Darcy: Well…my whole life I’ve been into art. I destroyed my parents’ basement when I was three years old I had a marker in one hand and I completely wrecked the wood paneling in the basement…my mom would’ve probably killed me if my dad didn’t put me somewhere safe.
Wanda: Did you always work in your art in your house or have you always had a room specifically designed to make art? Like a studio?
Darcy: No, not always…just for budgetary constraints I haven’t had that luxury, but, living here in Montreal and having a massive apartment with a room that nobody is using, it was like why not, you know. When I moved in here it was all filled with clutter.
Wanda: Yes, that’s very true…Do you think your art style changes when you have a place dedicated simply to making art?
Darcy: It changes in a way that it has the benefit of being accessible, if I don’t feel like going in public I don’t have to because it’s now in my home. I can just…you know, if I’m every feeling emotionally raw or whatever I can just go there and do something, it doesn’t involve going to the art hive.
Wanda: It’s like a retreat in your own home.
Darcy: Yes, right there, art is great for that.
Wanda: And when you were looking to design and make your studio space, what were your considerations? Like what were you thinking when you started setting up your studio area here?
Darcy: Twice a week, believe it or not, at one point, we were going to do Live Drawing here. There was a guy, Clark, who now lives in Victoria, and we put an ad up for this magazine called: “Sans Dessous” its French for no way out, you know, it’s like the magazine for that gallery there on Roy. We put an ad in there with a picture of a naked woman in silhouette, you know, and we had red around on the outside and paid like a hundred bucks to put our ad there. We were doing it Thursday and Saturday, during the first few months, in 2015, three or four years ago. And eventually we were like “Ok, fuck, well this is gonna cost a lot, what were we thinking? Like twice a week?” Nobody wants to, I mean, it’d just be me and the other guy just sitting here with some person we found on Craigslist.
Wanda: So, you share your studio space and you use it in many other creative ways…you throw parties, you do live drawing…when did your studio space evolve into supporting the local art community? When did it evolve into almost this creative art hive?
Darcy: It is an art hive. We are now registered as an art hive, and it evolved in that direction spontaneously and organically in response to having an open door, to having a sandwich sign on the sidewalk saying that we are doing live drawing, saying that we have yoga happening… saying there is a party happening. I used to have a big sign for that too, but the police would come and randoms would come trying to steal computers, or whatever else you don’t want when you are trying to have a show, you know. So now we have the door closed, there’s no sign on the door, maybe a public announcement on Facebook, that’s about as public as I’d like to go.
Wanda: So, having been through the experience of building your own studio and creating this safe space to the art community, do you have any advice for people that are looking to create their own studio in their apartment as well or are looking to get more involved with art? Any recommendations?
Darcy: Well, I kind of object to that, to this being a safe space…I don’t know what that means exactly but that is like a term that kinda gets bandied around a lot in social media and I don’t really think of this as being whatever that means. I would say that just put the energy out there that you want to invite people to come to your home and welcome that energy when you have an event. Be welcoming I think it’s the most important thing…if you don’t really wanna do it, it’s not gonna happen. You gotta welcome people and what their creative vision is. And it’s not about one’s person unique totalitarian perspective. You know, that conversation we had earlier about your five closest friends.
Wanda: Yeah
Darcy: That is kind of like the person that you become at a period in time. If you disclose that information, then I think it’s extremely limiting. So yes, just being open.
Wanda: I just mean in the way that like, how did you start organizing your space…for example, when I figured I wanted to make art in my room, I moved my bed around to create these walls…
Darcy: Oh, I see
Wanda: Like, how did you start organizing your space in that way?
Darcy: Oh, I see… It was simple, you know, at the time…long story short, there was a misunderstanding with the tenancy. And the primary tenant of this place was using these two rooms as a storage facility and living down in Mexico off the money that we would transfer her and taking advantage of it. So for me, I don’t really like putting up with people’s shit, I don’t think a lot of people do if you could help it and we could help it, there was something we could do about it and there are artists that I know, I mean, I am an artist and here is this beautiful place filled with this woman’s shitty old furniture, so I just threw it out. I got rid of it. And a lot of it was hoardy type garbage that looked like it belong on the curb anyway. So, I got rid of it and I had a massive blow up with her, of course. So, there was some resistance to the transition of this place into what it is today, you better believe that, it started out pretty explosive.
Wanda: How long did it take you to get it where you wanted it to be?
Darcy: Let’s see…we did a vernissage in just this room in 2015, at that point we moved all of her shit that we were storing here into the other side and just closed those doors, so we had half of the space. That was in March of 2015. By June of the following year, 14 months later, that room was completely…no, no..my bad! No, it was June of 2015. So, we sort of started clearing it in the Winter of 2015 and it took us about 6 months, long story short. It took us about half a year…it was a lot of stuff to get rid of it and a lot of cleaning. It just looked like a musty old room with boxes of National Geography and a bit of, like I said, it was a bit of a hoarder’s paradise in there.
Wanda: Do you have advice for artists that could be starting their own studio space and are having problems Landlord I know for a fact my tenant is very iffy about having paint on the wall…
Darcy: I would say that if it is something you’re interested in pursuing then a bit of autonomy and independent responsibility for your actions and following up on them. The most important thing is feeling sane about it, and not losing your shit, you know. And if someone is really affecting your mental health and making it uncomfortable, then you are probably in the wrong place. Because at the end of the day, they do own the building. You just kind of have to persevere, I would say. In the case of your landlord, I would just fucking do it and then later you can paint over it, but you have to understand their response. You know, the guy who owned this building during our sub tenancy was an Anglo-Jew named Howard, I did my yoga training with his daughter, weirdly enough. And he was a total prick, you know. He thinks he owns the building, occupancy is 90% of that. We are living here. The active ownership isn’t some piece of paper that you and the bank agree makes you own this place. You know, us being in here and occupying it. That is another way of looking at it, but it might not make you very happy, is what I am trying to say. So, depending on what you prioritize as being important; whether it is feeling good or just constantly having a storm brewing inside based on how other people are reacting to what you are reacting to, it might not be an ideal situation, because it wasn’t easy to just be like “yo, we are going to have a big community art studio in this apartment”
People aren’t necessarily going to want that, they own these places. In Montreal, you are probably aware of this, there is a very active culture of locataire vs propriétaire, landlords vs tenants, and there is a rental clinic that was extremely helpful in helping us make this transition, owned by a guy named Arnold Bennett, and it is at the Downtown Y and they operate every Sunday for a couple of hours, Sunday morning on the 5th floor of the Y. He was extremely helpful in helping us understand some of the intricacies in rental board law. Because some people think there is nothing you can do, that if the landlord says “oh, don’t put paint on the wall” that you can’t put paint on the wall because the landlord says so. That is not how it works. We have a lot of laws that works for the tenants in the province of Quebec that we can use to our advantage in getting places like these up and running. Which is what I did.
Wanda: Right
Darcy: There might be problems with the landlord’s reaction, they might not exactly understand what you are doing.
Wanda: Did you have any inspirations when you were building your space? If you did, could you tell us who? Perhaps, another artist and their studio space?
William: Maybe another apartment?
Darcy: Not really, no, it wasn’t really like that. There are people I know, there was this guy Jonno that was running this DIY space out of 1601 St Laurent, there was another group of people that had the basement of 3655 St Laurent, a DIY space there called Psychic City, you probably have heard of that place
Wanda: Yeah
Darcy: There is this place called the Plant, up on Van Horne. There is the Comedy Loft, that I think was also at 3655 St Laurent, and then they moved and they are now up at Rachel and St Laurent, there are a lot of DIY spaces, you know. I didn’t start the idea, but it was not like I am trying to emulate what they are doing, it was more a matter of necessity. I am a painter, a lot of people I know are into making their own music, and that is how we enjoy ourselves. And it is a great escape from reality, you know. Because let’s be honest, watching Netflix is great for like an hour or two at the most, but you need something else, right?
Wanda: Do you think it’s important to have a specific recurring space in which you produce your art or you like working in an multitude of places?
Darcy: That is an interesting question. The second option, I think it would be preferable. I think a lot of the reason graffiti exploded it the way that it did is because of the venue that an artist studio was traded for this situational street perspective that people could appreciate just as a pedestrian on the sidewalk, for example, they are not even in an art gallery. Painting in that environment, with people around, and all the smells, that is incredible.
William: You started with graffiti, right?
Darcy: Yes, but I was more of a tagger than a bomber. You know, the whole things with the letters, that they gotta be this big with the arrows, I never really felt like that was what I was comfortable doing, whenever I would try to do it it was never good anyway. So I never got into it that way, but I definitely started painting with graffiti.
William: Do you feel like being in another location is better for you then?
Darcy: Yeah, for sure, the Art Hive, for example. I went over there last week and I had a medical procedure performed and I was feeling kind of fucked up, you know. And I went in there, and they have these tables on the 5th floor of the EV building with a cabinet full of art supplies, and I just grabbed some stuff and did what I thought was a really cool drawing, it just expressed how I was feeling perfectly. It was good. I kind of attribute that to being there, because when I am here there is a lot of distractions.
Wanda: What do you think is the prevailing emotion you experience when you are on own studio space?
Darcy: Relaxation.
Wanda: Relaxation.
Darcy: Which isn’t necessarily the-
William: emotion you want?
Darcy: Exactly. I think for creating art you kind of need… not agitation. Maybe relaxation is fine.
William: I think it depends, really.
Darcy: Yeah. I am going to start making it more of a spiritual exercise, and have two candles. I’ll light one candle when I have the intention to start a project, and then I’ll light the other candle when I am actually in it, five or ten minutes into it.
Wanda: Do you feel as though you work better in a situation of controlled chaos or neat and tidiness in your studio?
Darcy: Controlled chaos.
William: Why is that? Have you tried being in a tidy space?
Darcy: Well, inevitably, entropy is going to happen, you know. So you can’t stop entropy, right? If you are an artist…you can fucking get all OCD. And I have been to artists’ studios where it is really well organized and they are very productive.
William: Yeah, I think it just depends.
Darcy: Once in a while I organize my paint closet, or I can’t find anything. It’s chaos.
Wanda: So, if you could change one thing about your studio, what would it be?
Darcy: What we just talked about, I’d make it more organized.
Wanda: Do you have something you use the most?
Darcy: What do you mean? Like, a tool?
Wanda: Yes.
Darcy: Yeah, house paint and rollers for doing underpainting.
Wanda: Universally, what do you think it is a must for an art studio?
Darcy: Adaptability. That is my universal answer.
William: So for it to be able to adapt to different mediums?
Wanda: To a state of mind?
Darcy: Yeah. All of the above.
