Studio | Allison B. Cooke

The images below are from three different studios I’ve worked in while living in Milwaukee. After teaching at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design for over three decades, I am now a full-time painter. I occasionally work in an attic space in our old Victorian house, but most often in a spacious studio in the Lincoln Warehouse a mile away from home. It’s a great old warehouse from the 1920s located in an interesting industrial part of the city next to the Kinnikinnick River.

Link to the Lincoln Warehouse

http://onmilwaukee.com/market/articles/lincolnwarehouse.html

Lincoln Warehouse Studio

In December of 2018, I moved across the hall from my first studio in the Lincoln Warehouse that faced west.

It was an expansive move granting over twice the square footage with a fantastic urban view out the bank of windows that face east.

We affectionately call it the “Bianco Studio’ because it is a very white space that creates an open luminous quality with reflected light that shifts in subtle ways throughout the day.

View as you walk in the door – facing east.

Since there is so much more space, I was able to move my etching press there as well.

View into the section of the studio facing north.

Really grateful for that back area to store paintings in progress and finished works.

Different areas of the studio for simultaneous projects in varying media.

View out the window to the northeast. Lake Michigan is just beyond the bridge in the back left

corner of the photo.

Another view out the windows onto the compiled urban landscape with docked sailboats, old

factories and an active trestle bridge with lots of both passenger and freight trains rumbling by

throughout the day…

A few views from my first studio space at Lincoln Warehouse.

Studio shot with Deborah’s chair. Painting in process and long since changed…

It was very exciting to watch the process of my first studio being ‘built out’ in the Lincoln Warehouse

in the spring of 2015.

So excited to see the new progress every day and night!

After moving in mid-spring, the Lincoln Studio slowly started to feel more like home.

Windows facing west

Last light in the evening…

Found this old gray board years ago…it makes a great drawing board!

Outside my studio windows to the Northwest. Since this photograph was taken,

unfortunately – this historic building has since been torn down.

The back of the Lincoln Warehouse faces east and has a great view. The KK River is just to the north, so there are lots

of boats coming, going, and being stored year-round.

Bayview Attic Studio at Home

Two rooms in the attic devoted to studio space. I tend to do oil-based media in one room and water-based

and drawing in the other.

Tighter quarters at home, but still love painting here as well…

Black and white studies made during a snowstorm that kept me home

My favorite thing to export back from Florence in the summer – dry pigments from Zecchi.

Works in progress with oil and cold wax

Morning light in the attic.

Lilly, one of my favorite studio mates.

Outside the tiny skylight window in my attic studio. I love this tree and the birds in winter!

Archived images from my Kenilworth Studio at the Peck School of the Arts facility – University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

Kenilworth Square East is a great old warehouse that has been converted into studio and performance spaces for the Peck School of the Arts at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.