NEW TIMES How long have you been working in the same studio?
ARCHER Itās our house; my wife [fellow artist Lori Slater] and I have lived here for 20 years, and weāve been doing the studio sale for 16 years.
NEW TIMES How is it normally received? Is it successful?
ARCHER It varies. Itās been building. We make our living by going to art festivals, and most of those art festivals are in the spring, fall, and summer. Winterās a bleak time, and this is our sole income. What we did was we started opening our studio up, and we put it on Presidentsā weekend, because we have people who come from Los Angeles and San Francisco, and some people from Orange County. We take a lot of the furniture out of our house, and then we turn our entire house into a gallery. We serve food, itās just an informal kind of thing. It gives people the chance to actually meet artists in their environment, and just relate to them as actual human beings. We put signs out along the street in Cambria that direct them to our house. But we also get people who think theyāre coming to a garage sale, and they come in, they peek their head in the door, they see that itās art, and they immediately leave. But weāve been getting about 150 people or so.
NEW TIMES Can you describe the differences in yours and Loriās styles?
ARCHER Lori, her work is quite personal. She gets subject matter from objects which are around her in her daily life, but she incorporates them in still lifes that are really colorful, but simplified and evocative. Sheās really interested in gardens, and then she expands to some landscape paintings, like the orchards in the Paso Robles area. Her work is primarily in watercolor. I started as a watercolor artist, but now my work is primarily mixed media on canvas. I work, in a sense, a little more abstract. Loriās work focuses often on the subject matter, on what it is that she is capturing, and her feeling toward it, and mine focuses more on the process of painting. Itās more painterly in a way. You can see the brush strokes more.
NEW TIMES How affordable is the work for the average person?
ARCHER Itās affordable. We have everything from prints that are well under $100, and it goes up to several thousand dollars for larger paintings and more complex work. Thereās something really for everybody. ā
This article appears in Feb 2-9, 2012.