Blue Hair Studios

When I was 23 or 24 or so, I was part of an artists’ collective studio space called The Shamrock Hotel Studios. Originally we called ourselves The Blue Stair Studio and Gallery but decided to change it after we found out there was a Blue Star Studios in Austin.

After we found this place we had to clean it up (severely) and make it both usable as studios and as a presentation space. 4312-1/2 Elm Street had initially been a hotel but at some point became a brothel, and then was an empty building for a long time. It was great for studio space, since it had ten individual rooms in varying sizes, all with large windows, hardwood floors, and 12 foot ceilings. We knocked out some walls, swept and mopped, patched holes, and eventually it became studios for eight artists.

But what kind of Blue Stair Studios would we be without a set of blue stairs? We were on the second floor, and since our street entrance was on the first floor, we had a wide set of wooden stairs leading from the street to the lobby/gallery area. We painted our front door red and our stairs bright blue.

After the stairs were dry I got the job of painting the handrailing that led all the way up. I started at the top and worked my way down, sitting on the stairs with the gallon bucket of bright blue oil-based enamel paint on the stair behind me. When I got about halfway down the stairs, I leaned back too far while painting underneath the railing and, with incredible accuracy, dunked my entire ponytail right down into the bucket of paint. All the way in. To a bucket of oil based paint.

So here I am, a redhead with a dripping blue ponytail, freaking out yet still trying not to splatter blue paint all over the white walls that we’d just painted. My roommate (who was also working out of the studios at that point) took me into the bathroom, plugged the drain, and calmly poured turpentine through my hair for about 30 minutes until most of it came out.

The stairs remained blue even after we changed our name. I haven’t been based out of that space in a number of years, but apparently they’re still around.