Long Range Studio Visit
Susannah Rea-Downing + Adrian Almquist
This Long Range Studio Visit brings together two American artists whose practices are informed by the natural environment. They visited PADA at different moments but were both drawn to the same material once here, the collapsed pitch pine roof beams we salvaged after the storms in 2022. They decided to send physical letters to each other in which the distance and delay become productive conditions rather than obstacles. The extended intervals between each letter encouraging careful reflection. The hand written letter and attached drawings and images bring a very personal note to the conversation which unfolded slowly over the last year.
Images of the letters sent by the two artists.
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adrian almquist grew up in Eastern Massachusetts and has been interested in the natural environment, agriculture, crafts, gardening and building since he was in his teens. Over the last 25 years, he has worked as a cook, baker, roofer, gardener, farmer, carpenter, electrician, trail builder, timber framer, and teacher. All of these experiences inform his creative practice. His work spans mediums of sculpture, textiles, ceramics, and mixed media.
adrian is currently creating work using local materials, through a grant from the Community Foundation of Western Massachusetts Valley Creates Project Evolution Grant. He lives in the hills of Western Massachusetts, where he gains inspiration from his local fibershed, forests, quarries, wood kilns, and a thriving arts community.
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Esther is a multimedia artist and educator based in Amsterdam. She works across film, sculpture, performance, and costume, using materials like ceramics, textiles, copper, and marble. These elements come together in installations that combine storytelling with ecological and socio-political themes. Her work is research-driven and often involves working with archives, collaborating with scientists, historians, and ecologists, and doing field research. She took part in the PADA international residency in 2024 and returned for the alumni programme in 2025.
May 2025
A:Dear Susannah,
Very glad to be in touch and begin this long range studio visit. I enjoyed seeing your wooden chain at PADA. Very inspiring. How long have you been doing these large scale chains?
Since this is the first letter to you I will open with some starter questions. Thanks for agreeing to snail mail. In our digital age it is nice to step away, slow down, and return to a slower pace of correspondence.
What hours do you keep in the studio?
Do you have a studio routine?
Has your studio practice changed since returning from PADA?
What have you got in production now?
What are you reading?
How do you relate reading to your practice?
What sound track do you have in the studio?
What are you working towards?
Looking forward to having this conversation unfold.
Be well and take it slow.
- Adrian
June 2025
S: Hello Adrian, I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to get back to you. I was putting off writing to you until I made it to merchant modern to see some of your work in person, but the timing became crunchy. I look forward to seeing some pieces in person. But the images are great and I can sense how central place is in your work.
What is your way into place? How does place get into you? How do you process place? What was your sense of the desert? How did the land there sit with you? And what was your impression of your habitation of the desert? How does place dictate materials in your work and how do you navigate the relationship between the two? How do you fit in?
To answer a few of your questions. My studio practice is somewhat ephemeral- in the nine years I’ve lived in Los Angeles, I’ve never had a studio here. I have keys to the furniture shop where I work production and a lovely and generous boss who is supportive of my personal practice and the use of the shop. I am currently making a drop leaf table as a wedding gift for my brother from boards of a walnut tree that died in a fire and was milled by my grandfather the year I was born.
Table subtitle.
My chain making practice is new to LA (I just completed my first in Los Angeles in April) but I started making chains in a serious (sort of!) way three summers ago when I would spend summers with my dad in rural Washington and use his yard, tools and forest access to work.
Audio books are a big part of my work and life. I am interested in history and land and how people interact with each other and their environment. Some of my latest good reads have been, “all about love” by bell hooks, “The unsettling of america” by Wendell berry, and “split tooth” by Tanya Tagaq. But most of my personal work happens to music: Radiohead , Johnny cash, black mountain. What are you reading? What are you listening to? Forgive me for not answering all your questions in this one- we have time.
- Susannah
Susannah Rea-Downing, It Took a Storm to Make You Free Again
July 2025
A: Susannah,
It was great to receive your card, learn more about your practice and reflect on your questions.
Place does play an important part in my practice. I think residencies and new places have been transformational in my practice due to the solitude they provide. To be alone in a new place or a familiar place allows my mind to wander, soak in my surroundings and enter a realm of possibilities. In this state, I find myself having visions of new work. Having time to just observe, undistracted by technology is an important part of being in a place. The desert has always had a powerful energy for me. So different from the forests of New England where I grew up? I love the openness of the horizon, cool mornings, hot midday and the power of shade there, the difference of light and the plants and animals thriving in an extreme climate, truly a reminder of the resilience of life on this planet. I think High Desert Test Sites Residency would be a great place for you to spend time.
The series I did in clay there happened when I realized they didn't have a potter's wheel and I wanted to make vessels. Using the rocks and wooden pieces found in the desert unfolded spontaneously, but I was so joyful when the pieces came out of the kiln capturing the essence of the landscape there.
I just set up my first real studio space in my basement. And although limited mostly to clay, it is so great to have a dedicated place to think, plan, write and reflect. Your drop leave table sounds rad. And so amazing the wood came from your grandfather the year you were born. So beautiful to be giving that to your brother.
I also have Bell Hooks on my night table. "All About Love” and “Unsettling of America" was a profound influence on my exploration of agriculture in my late teens and twenties. If you are interested in land, you may be interested in “Ceremonial Time" by John Hanson Mitchell. I read it a long time ago, but it is beautifully written, and a theme I often think about. Time and how time changes, quickens, slows, stands still.
I like to listen to music, usually the radio in my truck and on the job site, but in the studio usually Spotify. Recently I have been enjoying Valerie June, Levi Turner and 80’s classics from Duran Duran, The Cars, Bruce Springsteen.
I hope this letter brings you a smile and hope you are finding resilience and support in your community during these times. I look forward to continuing this exchange. I am beginning to explore local quarries looking for stone and will let you know as my work unfolds. What else are you hopeful for in the coming year? How does living in LA influence your creativity?
Be well,
- Adrian
September 2025
Adrian Almquist, Tree Plate
S: Dear adrian,
Your letter did bring me a smile and much food for thought.
I love what you’ve said about place; aloneness, observation- wandering of the mind and senses and the phenomenon of exploration in new places correlating automatically to exploring one’s insides and makings simultaneously. I love the pace of change in a new place. The observation slows you down and I catch myself in stillness. I am discovering the richness of stillness. I think a lot about tree time: how the idea of time changes when rooted into the earth, observing that hillside, those rocks, that river year after year. The sun on your skin in slightly different places as the seasons progress and to compare that to the manic phases and changes of the moon. To know and eat and filter and add to the mineral composition of the soil in your place for 60, 200, 1500 years. It boggles my mind and I love thinking about it. It sounds like these thoughts may be informed by your book recommendation- it’s now on my list, thank you.
I love what you’ve said about the desert, and I wonder how you relate to where you are now? what are you finding in the rock quarries? What are you making? What are you reflecting? What are you soaking in?
Very exciting that you’ve set up your own studio in your basement. Does solitude work to your advantage? Do you ever have others in, or dip into a shared space?
I find I work best in solitude, but I love the camaraderie of shared space. And wood working requires so much heavy (and expensive) equipment, I think it would feel like a waste to have it all to myself. But ceramics is different of course.
Thank you for asking about my city: these are trying times and Los Angeles has characteristically not missed a beat. I live in MacArthur park, which is largely a Guatemalan neighborhood and these people have not been cowed. Street vendors are bustling, store front churches are packed and the currents of traffic never let up, even at the height of the occupation. There is great resilience here. While the diversity makes this city unlike any other, the thing about Los Angeles that keeps me rooted here is the land upon which the city rests. There is something magnetic about this place, seated between desert, ocean and mountains. I’ve been spending a lot of time in the mountains this year- I work for a furniture maker/sculptor in the foothills two days a week, and rather than making the trek out and back both days, I drive out, work a day and then pop into the Angeles National forest where I stay the night in my little tent. The next morning I wake up early, pack up camp and head to work. It is a wonderful way to stay grounded, and keep in touch with the moon. A long hike before bed churns the creative juices, which are ricocheted off the mountains and filtered through the trees. Sleeping in the forest after such processing, seems to have a distilling effect, and I am restored to the creative animal I was intended to be.
I hope this finds you well, Adrian. I am looking forward to your response. Til then
- Susannah
Adrian Almquist, We are of the Earth, 2024
October 2025
S: Dear Susannah,
We are entering autumn and a flurry of activity before winter and snow sets in. Your letter was great and I am really enjoying this slow life correspondence. I loved the hand sewn edges on the one card and the other image and collage pieces. Where are the black and white wood block images from?
The quarries have been a great new sense of inspiration, a literal portal to other times in history, ancient seabed, heated, compressed, solidified, crystallized. It's been dry. So dry. No real rain for months. So my mind is often on water these days…
I am about to start on a piece half wood, half stone. Joined in a traditional timber frame joint, I had a local Stone yard, cut the stone in half in this great facility, and was really excited to go pick it up and make the reciprocal half.
I have been thinking about reciprocity, how we support and show up for our communities. How we get back to smaller communities, less money, more giving.
As for my studio, I am continuing to build it out. I ordered a slab roller, but I'm trying to find time to set it up. With so few rainy days, I've been working a lot. Shingling a house and now roofing another with metal. What have you been making? Reading? Listening to? I've been reading “We Survived the Night" by Julian Brave Noiscat. It's about his life growing up in Oakland and on his tribal reservation in B.C. interwoven with Coyote stories about creation, the world, humanity. I've also been reading “The Book of Alchemy" by Suleika Jaouad, a book of stories and journal prompts which has been great, although I haven't been journaling that much.
I mostly work solo here in the studio, but a friend has been using my wheel recently. Firings have been a communal effort, and I think I'll be at one at the end of the month. There is a regular craft/art meet up I've been meaning to go to, to work on some small projects in a group atmosphere but haven't made it yet.
It is refreshing to hear about LA’s resistance during these dark political days. It is a magical place and the landscape and energy there are captivating.
It's great to hear about your work and camping in the mountains. That balance of city life and wilderness must be refreshing and energizing and a reminder of the replenishing power of nature. Slowing time. Stillness.
I hope you are well and look forward to seeing your photos in the drive. Perhaps when I receive your next letter, we can transcribe our conversation and upload it for PADA. I hope we will continue this exchange as long as it makes sense... It is fun to watch this art project unfold in real time... across a distance…
Be well,
- Adrian
February 2026
Dear Adrian,
Thank you for your letter in the fall and the letter of the solstice as well. It has been so, so great to see the photos you have uploaded to the google drive as well. I love the breadth of your work. The great number of different mediums you work with and to see your hand in each of them. I love seeing you as an artist, showing up across different mediums. And that frame building! Wow!! I heard in your last letters your balance between your work, and your (art) work. This has been a big theme in my life lately as well. At the end of last year, I took a leap and switched up my schedule at the expense of about a third of my income. I have tightened my belt considerably, though it is not unbearable, and now have 2 sacred studio days in addition to a 2 day weekend (most weeks) built into my schedule. It is not an exaggeration to say that of all the things I have built, this schedule is one of the things I am most proud of. It is the result of conversations I had with a few of my bosses one of which resulted in a big fat raise and the other lead to talk of my launching a line of lamps and home goods via the furniture company I work production for. The whole thing has put me in a head space that really changed the game. I am making lamps, bowls and spoons, but it feels like a career. I’m trying not to get too excited or ahead of myself, but I am also soaring in the sun, and living in the light of possibility. I have also been prototyping a chair I designed for the furniture shop. About to start round 2 on that.
I hear what you are saying about community. This is something I have been struggling with for many years. Everyone is so busy, and in LA, everyone is so spread out that it is really difficult to find groups of like minded people and have meaningful exchanges. I have been teaching out of a membership shop that has private bench spaces for 10 paying members who run their sculpture/furniture businesses out of the space with a communal machine room, sanding area, and finish booth. I weaseled my way into that job, partly so that I could have access to the members and their knowledge of material, craft, and the business side of it all. That has been a really wonderful community in every sense. The students are a part of that too.
Something else I have discovered recently, community-wise, is a collective I think you would really dig, if they’re not already on your radar: the dark mountain project. They put out 2 publications per year, and I won’t say more than that, other than that I think you should check them out.
I read a book that made me think of you: over to you- it’s a compilation of letters between John and Yves Berger. The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller recently blew my mind, and I’ve been working my way through Ottessa Moshfegh’s work, and highly recommend On Savage Streets by Caroline Dodds Pennock. The book of alchemy and we survived the night are on my list. Thank you for sharing.
Musically speaking, I’ve been listening to Idles album Crawler like a crazy person, over and over again, and a band I love called rattle snake milk who I got to see in January.
I’m glad you like the block print cards! I cut the images out of a book who’s binding had failed called “les moreurs et costumes de tous les peoples” by casimir henricy, published in French in 1847. This volume focused on Africa, so the colonial mindset is present in the images, some more so than others.
Yes, let’s type up what we have so far and send it to Tim. I would really love to continue this correspondence. I have been getting a great deal out of it, and I would love to keep up with your work and your thoughts. Thank you for everything so far, and I sincerely hope there is much more to come.
Big love,
- Susannah
Susannah Rea-Downing and Adrian Almquist are both PADA Alumni.
We thank them for participating in this Long Range Studio Visit.