EAST Interview: Abi Daniel Games the System

Like so many young creatives, Abi Daniel is living out one form of the Austin dream - you move to Austin "temporarily" because you heard it was hip and you love the sunshine then get sucked in by the city's charm and pretty soon, you find yourself with a home, a life, and even a job you can't really complain about. An illustrator who works across many mediums, Daniel was able to land a position as an artist for one of Austin's many game companies. When she's not drawing space machines for a paycheck, Daniel creates refined portraits, often of animals, using watercolor and pyrography. For this year's East Austin Studio Tour, Daniel will be setting up a temporary workspace and gallery show inside screen printing studio extraordinaire, Bearded Lady (located at 3504 E. 4th St.). Abi Daniel talked to us recently about her own messy studio, her "really good nightmares", and what it's like to be a creative in the game industry.

What is your background in art and design?

I attended Maryland Institute, College of Art (MICA) in Baltimore from '97 to '01, majoring in illustration (and spent some time at RISD in there too).  Oddly, I graduated with no clear intention to be a professional artist.  It seemed to me at the time to be an unforgiving and unrewarding aspiration, or just sort of impossible.  I graduated a little young, though, and felt I had time to kill, so I came to Austin to chill out for a while. I worked service jobs and just painted some on the side for a number of years.  I accidentally fell into the gaming (computer games, not casinos) industry in 2004 when a regular at the bar where I worked offered me an internship at a local game-development studio.  That regular has since become a very good friend and colleague and has helped introduce me to a few really great professional opportunities.  I'm currently trying to do this slow-motion bounce between commercial work and fine art.  If I can keep pulling it off and doing both, I'll be a happy camper.

Have you ever participated in East Austin Studio Tours before? 
 
Not officially - I've sort of piggybacked on some spaces in years past, but this is the first time I've done it legit and gotten a page in the catalog, which makes me feel much better because the folks over at Big Medium are champs and completely deserve the application fee.  

What will you be showing at Bearded Lady for this year's EAST?  

I'll have some copper plate etchings, little woodblock prints, lithographs with watercolor, drawings, an oil painting or two, some assemblage sculpture/shadowboxy things, hopefully a few extra surprises...

What is your studio space like? 

Small, and very messy.  The usual story. It's a room in my house that's about 100 sq. ft. in which I ripped up the carpet so the floor is unfinished concrete - overstuffed shelves on the wall full of art supplies, and just lots and lots of junk.  One and the same, I suppose.  I have a table made of two doors with 2x4 legs, and a card catalog for the cataloging of the junk supplies.  I just bought a flat file to hopefully cut down on the random stacks of paper.

What art supplies can't you live without?

My favorite thing right now is a little wood-burning tool that my boy got me for Christmas last year.  I like the lines that it makes, and have been trying it on wood, paper, fabric; whatever I can burn without making my studio too fumy.  What else... watercolor, gouache, oil paints, and found objects.  Glue, that's important, too.