Studio 360

I am a painter married to a sculptor. We met 6 years ago when we were studio neighbors. We found out that we had gone to the same art school, but 4 years apart. I thought at first he was too young for me and wrote him off. One year later during a studio visit I listened to him talk about his work and like a bolt of lightening I suddenly realized that I had a mad crush on him! After some funny false starts, we finally had our first date on New Year's eve of 2004. After that night we were inseparable. We moved in together after 3 months and got married last summer. Although at times we're saturated in the intensity that comes from a life shared by 2 artists, I feel that there is no one that can understand or get me like he does, and vice-versa. This year we both got nominated for the same artist award. We have a great life!

I am a sculptor that works on Public Commissions and my partner of 8 years is a Toy Designer/Inventor. One year ago we collaborated for the first time on a national competition for the Old Man of the Mountain in NH. We won the design competition and our talents and skills complemented one another nicely. We make a good team and give each other insights and critiques of each others work. We are visual people and it affects all areas of our lives and how we interact with one another.

My husband and I are actors. Over the 11 years we've known each other, the 8 years we've been together and the 2 years we've been married, we have worked on over 30 productions together. Whatever stress we are going through in our lives, once we are in a theater, it seems to disappear for a while and there is only the work that we are creating with or for others. We are stage combat choreographers and, ironically, when we are creating something violent that is when we are the most peaceful. Someone looking in our window may see us sword fighting in the living room, choking in the kitchen and punching each other in the face everywhere else, but what they are really witnessing is an actor and life partner's trust in the love, safety and creative genius of another.

I am a dancer and writer living with a photographer. We are frequently amused - and often frustrated - by the fact that I am a verbally-captivated person, while my partner is supremely visual. Though I myself am not an active dance performer at this time, my connections in the dance world have provided infinite fodder for my partner's visual career - and plenty of things for me to write about.

Who does the Joy Division cover at the end of the story? Brilliant.

My husband and I grew up 45 minutes apart, in Maryland. We met in California, as fine arts majors in a life painting class at Otis College of Art and Design. Our Instructor gave an assignment to choose someone in the class we didn't know and paint mutual portraits of each other. After weeks of classwork and homework, staring intently into each other's eyes, studying each little facial characteristic, the flames of our passion were ignited. We began to spend every night in his studio together, painting each other, drinking wine, smoking cigarettes. Almost 7 years later, not much has changed. There are less bottles of wine and fewer cigarettes but we are having just as much fun together and are just as passionate about one another. We inspire each other as we always have, to make the most of each moment and to move forward always with our dreams and imagination at the forefront of creating our art and our life together.

My wife is a visual artist --photographer, painter, graphic designer. I am a musician, writer, and erstwhile photographer.

We regularly don't see eye-to-eye on visuals, as well as on my music. She rarely comments on issues with my writing, but will speak up clearly, if she doesn't like a part of a song, or how I've done it.

I'm lucky to be so madly in love with this person who's so passionate about her opinions of my work.

Hi Alan – that Joy Division cover is by Susanna and the Magical Orchestra, from the album Melody Mountain. Enjoy!

My husband and I own an organic farm in western Washington. A year ago we started writing poetry together. I have a visual arts background and he enjoys building things but poetry was new to us both.

Farming is physically challenging, emotionally difficult and we sometimes do it with dazzling ineptitude. Writing poems from our differing perspectives helps us appreciate the gravity of our tasks and roles. The poems remind us why getting up every two hours all night to dropper feed a sick hen after butchering the turkeys the day before makes sense.

Our website is www.FriendyHaven.com

While we aren't artists, I am a journalism grad student and he is a poli sci undergrad. Our different study habits boggle my mind. I have books, journal articles and presentations covering almost every flat space in our apartment, and he is okay with the fact that he has no idea where his backpack is. I think if we lived in a space with our own offices, he would have a "No girls allowed" sign, too. And would barge into my office to say "You weren't working, were you?".

I am a huge fan of Studio 360, it helps in my ongoing effort to maintain brain activity in our sprawling, traffic choked, ambition flooded and culturally challenged paradise, and this piece was ABSOLUTELY BRILLIANT, so kudos to the poet, the writer AND the producer.

I have a wonderful, darling and totally supportive husband who, without fully realizing it, undermines my artistic efforts every chance he gets. He can't help it. He works in television and they're all about the quick cuts and short attention spans. But we've solved the problem, we moved to a new place where my painting and writing studio has a door that closes and locks and he must now knock to enter. In the slightly more than a year in which we have been operating with this arrangement I have had my first gallery exhibition/installation titled "Reverse Trash Streams: The Junk Mail Project" at L.A. Contemporary Gallery in Los Angeles, and finally finished the novel I had worked on far too many years to mention and sold it to Counterpoint Press. Titled "Entertaining Disasters: A Novel About Women, Madness and Home Entertaining," it will be out in early 2009. And, to top it all off, we love each other more than ever!

Thanks Studio 360 for being there and being so brilliant so much of the time.

Alas...I have neither poet, nor writer, nor artist in my life. I'm a writer at night (and a clerk by day...sigh), and I escape to an artists' centre once a year to be around the 'others.' I like to pretend that I'm surrounded by them all the time instead of cubicles and stacks of paperwork.

Where? Where are these poet husbands? Do they only live in arts centres?