Tiny Desk Tour: Avery Elias

Welcome to the Tiny Desk Tour series! View the whole archive of artists, writers, and illustrating sharing their creative spaces here.

Musicians have tiny desk concerts and artists have tiny desks in tiny cabins and large forests to be inspired by. Today’s tiny desk is Avery Elias’s. I’m a big fan of Avery’s art and her blog, Snail Tales.

Avery lives in a special place called the Yukon which I had to look up on the map. It’s directly very very very north of San Francisco and apparently much colder and darker too. This environment works for Avery. She’s in tune with her natural surroundings, the climate, and the darkness, and from the looks of it, she channels this connectedness beautifully through her work.

Avery makes an interesting point about time. She says, “it feels like time doesn’t matter when everything is sleeping in a frozen world.” I understand what she means. From 9-5, when everyone else is working too, I find myself racing against the clock, putting pressure on myself to produce and create. The harder I try to focus, the faster time goes, I panic, and I get nothing done. And then, right around 5pm, when I know most people are logging off, I can finally relax and move at my own pace. That’s when things really get moving.

On with the show! Here’s Avery & her tiny desk:

Welcome to my tiny desk, in my tiny cabin, in a very large forest. The Boreal Forest, to be exact! Also known as Taiga. The world’s largest land biome, so they say. I live in the subarctic part, in Whitehorse, Yukon, on the traditional territories of the Kwanlin Dün First Nations and the Ta’an Kwäch’än Council. I’ve learned that many international people believe the Yukon is part of Alaska? Preposterous! It’s a northern territory in Canada, just east of Alaska. I had to set that straight before we get into what we are really here to talk about, the important matter at hand: desks.

My kitchen table is my desk while I live in this cabin. There is absolutely no room for a desk. Estee Zales made me laugh during her tiny desk issue when she wrote: “Other people can work from their kitchen table, clearing it each night and resetting it each morning. My friend does this. She seems perfectly content. I would rather quit than do what she does.” Then I almost choked on my tea when I saw Carolyn Yoo has THREE desks in her little studio room. Come on! Incredible. I told myself losing a desk was worth it to live a romantic cabin life in the forest (it was). But sometimes I really miss having a desk.

Acrylic paints, soy sauce, glue bottle, cut up wool fabric, sesame oil, twigs, oatmilk carton fish cut outs, carrot salad. My kitchen table art desk. I snapped this pic in the summer in the middle of a self-proclaimed art retreat at my cabin with one of my close friends. I kept trying to clean it up and she said oh just LEAVE IT. So this is what the table looked like all week. Allison reminds me often that sometimes in life, the mess is part of the masterpiece. And sometimes you just live in the creative chaos.

When the kitchen table isn’t being used for food or making things, it’s used to pack up shop orders. (I have to disclose here that I tried to make my table look aesthetic for the picture and it now feels like a lie).

It took me months to finally put this tour together after Allie approached me with the idea. I was juggling a lot, but I think mostly I was avoiding it because I’m not a fan of my tiny desk at the moment. But I realized that doesn’t matter, this series is to get a peak into our real work stations and real lives as artists. This is the reality of my studio and desk life right now, and it works.

It’s nice to have a wall of art nearby. Most of the stuff hanging is my own art, which is helpful to glance over at when I’m thinking about colour palettes etc.

I’ve always done my best work at night... It’s probably why I like the dark in the winter. I’m an unfortunate artist cliché. Or maybe fortunate in a place where the sun doesn’t rise until 11am in mid winter. It feels like time doesn’t matter when everything is sleeping in a frozen world. I can go on airplane mode, the outside doesn’t need me. Why would it? It’s frozen and asleep. No external distractions, no obligations, voices, expectations.

Some nights I’m Hilma af Klint in the 1800s with the candle burning low, pouring tea after tea. Thoughts wandering, maybe into delusions, but I wake up the next morning feeling like I’ve travelled and come back from another century, and I like that feeling.

Other times I use my “desk” for freelance projects. That kind of work is usually done during the day, sometimes at this table or at the library, often at a coffee shop or the local co-work. People ask me what kind of work I do and it takes me a while to explain. Last month my income came from: web design and illustration for local organizations, video animation for a software company, tours at the local wildlife preserve, teaching English to ESL adult learners, prints in local gift shops and my online shop, and Substack subscribers. This part of my life is as anarchic (or fluid?!) as my kitchen desk.

Now, I need to introduce you to my desk companion! You might have seen her lurking in her window hammock in the previous picture. You also must be terribly shocked that I have a black cat, after I’ve just disclosed that I spend my nights drawing by candlelight, referencing 1800s mystics. Her name is Lennie, short for Leonora (pronounced Leo-nora, not Le-nora).

I’m thinking I should show you my other tiny “desk” too: my coffee table. The top table part lifts up and out into more of a desk, convenient to store supplies inside, good for upper back strain, which apparently I have plenty of.

Here my sketchbook sits on a laptop stand. I begrudgingly use the stand to draw on, because of ergonomics and such.

These days my main drawing tools fit into three pencil cases that I usually carry around.

This level of organization was forced on me. If I have the pastels mixed with any of the other tools they make everything dirty and smudges get everywhere. The first case is for pastels, the second for pencil crayons, and the last is for markers and pens.

1. Case One: Caran d’Ache wax water soluble pastels and Sennelier mini oil pastels.

2. Case Two: Caran d’Ache pencil crayons (mixed colours), glue stick, pencil sharpener, scissors (not pictured)

3. Case Three: Faber Castell pen brushes, black ink brush pen, 0.38 Muji pen, pencil

My sketchbook journals are usually sitting on my coffee table desk. For the last year I’ve pretty much exclusively used these Moleskine journals as my sketchbook. I started out using them just to write in, and then I discovered I love the off-white colour and texture of the paper. And then I realized how convenient it is to have your journal and sketchbook all in one!?

I love writing on paper without any lines. My writing is tiny and I don’t like being forced into a specific paragraph line-height. I tried to blur out the writing in case I have anything embarrassing written in there 😀

All this talking about my desk, or lack of a desk, has made me think about how I’ve done some of my favourite work in this non-desk-friendly cabin. And I’ve created more consistently than I did when I had a desk in my last apartment. I guess I’m saying, all those famous quotes about artists finding ways to create, that you don’t need a perfect setup… they are onto something. Go forth and make things!

Thanks, Avery! Be sure to check out Avery’s work on her blog, website, and Instagram.

Thank you for reading! If we haven’t met yet, I’m Allie Sullberg, and I’m an artist, writer, and illustrator. If you liked this post, one of the biggest ways you can support my work is by subscribing. Likes, comments, and shares are also a quick and meaningful way to support! Paid subscribers make this work possible. If you’d like to check out more of my work, here’s my website and my Instagram.