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Summer-Fall 2008: Home Story: Art & Space by Jennie Lay ##image1-Center- Photography by Corey Kopischke##
It’s no wonder Diane Cionni’s paintings reflect spirituality and light. Her layers of
sacred art, abstractions on nature and brilliant color are created in a space that is
nothing less than divine.“People come in to look at my art and I have to give them 20 minutes to settle down because they are looking at the building,” Diane says, grinning as she glances around her studio. A devoted yogi since she was 16, she relaxes on a chair with one leg bound comfortably in half-lotus position. An unfinished canvas, inspired by meditation and her intricate studies of nature’s repetitive patterns, is propped on an easel nearby. For nearly five years, Diane and fellow Steamboat Springs artist Susan Schiesser shared studio space in Strawberry Park. When the time came to find a new lease, Diane scoured Steamboat to no avail. “People tend to think artists want to work in garages,” she says. Finally, the empty downtown lot she and her husband – emergency room doctor David Cionni – had owned for 14 years came into play; but they knew an eccentric studio wouldn’t fit the neighborhood feel of their home on Uncochief Circle. With the help of architect Joe Robbins, the art studio that Diane and David ultimately built is the first phase of a family home.
##image2-center-Diane and husband, David, strike a pose.##
Outside, Diane’s studio appears a modest, mountain contemporary residence. Inside, it’s an oasis of creativity, a single serene, wide-open space with cool white walls, sustainable cork floors and appealing geometric window arrangements. The fluid space fills with natural light and a sense of calm, and an ever changing installation of Diane’s working canvasses graces the towering walls. It’s designed with overhead beams and wall studs so someone else could eventually add windows, walls and extra plumbing to finish it out as a family home. But for now, this is safe harbor to delve into the treasure trove that inspires Diane’s art – an organized chaos of doodles and drawings, journal entries, electron microscope photographs of blood cells and liver disease, old sewing patterns, sacred art from India and Tibet, scraps of handmade paper, newspaper clippings and intimate manipulated photos of nature. Early in his progression toward contemporary design, this was Joe’s first art studio. It’s a “relatively compact, efficient design” he calls the “wave of the future.” While Diane was priced out of her aspirations for a completely self-sustainable structure, Joe says the 1,909-square-foot studio “is a greener building than she gives it credit,” with low-E glass, high insulation values, tight windows and doors, good use of natural cross-ventilation and a high-tech air exchange system for healthy indoor air quality. “I wanted to combine my yoga practice with my art, because that’s where my art was going,” Diane says. “I wanted it to feel like a little chapel, with the highest ceilings possible,
something a little special.” A loft peers over her studio – a yoga and meditation space. In a typical day, Diane does an early morning pranayama meditation, paints, then an afternoon practice of asanas, or poses.
To read the rest of Home Story: Art & Space, subscribe to Steamboat Magazine today! Subscribe
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