Library of Knowledge

Studio Facilitator Stephen Teater helps Eva Kimjun, at Southside Unlimited with a piece she is working on. Sacramento, CA, USA

There’s a sensation that comes before knowing. It’s that hum of doubt, curiosity, or anticipation that arrives just before recognition. In a studio, it might be the moment a brush hovers above the page, or when a material is chosen without certainty of where it belongs.

Supported studios give this space of “pre-knowing” room to breathe. Rather than rushing toward an answer, facilitators help artists lean into that moment, to see it not as hesitation but as possibility. Doubt is not a stop sign - it’s an invitation.

I remember working with an artist who loved finding images of celebrities and recreating them through drawing. At first, she presented her work with hesitancy, worried she hadn’t gotten it “right.” The drawings didn’t resemble the photos, but they were radiant interpretations, each with colorful strokes of pencil deliberately cast onto the page. Her doubt was quickly hurdled when given assurance - not that her work matched the original image, but that her concentration, her mark-making, her dedication to the act of making, was itself a success.

The goal was never about adherence to the original or a “correct” interpretation. It was about what could be experienced and expanded upon in the space between the source image and her own rendering. That was where the energy lived. As a facilitator, my role was to make sure she understood this - that she could gain confidence from it and find the courage to explore further. Over time, her willingness to experiment and her curiosity led her to larger paper, greater detail, and a broader articulation of her unique vision. The value was not in resemblance, but in the unfolding of her experience and her openness to expansion.

This is the cycle of knowing in supported studios:

• The artist learns to recognize and move through doubt, discovering their own voice.

• The facilitator learns how to respond to those moments - not only by affirming that knowledge is built through doing, but also by discerning when and how to introduce materials, processes, and approaches that serve the motivations of those they support. In this way, the facilitator’s knowledge actively shapes and amplifies the artist’s journey.

• Together, they share a symbiotic process where knowledge is absorbed, reshaped, and returned.

At their best, supported studios remind us that knowledge is not a static curriculum or a top-down transfer. It’s a living relationship - where the pause before certainty becomes the spark of shared growth. Over time, this living relationship expands, so that a supported studio becomes an ever-growing library of knowledge: each artist adding to it their own way of coming into contact with the world, each at their own pace, in their own time.