IN THE STUDIO WITH EVE BIDDLE AND THEO COULOMBE
- Victoria Hood, Founder
- Nov 20, 2025
- 12 min read
A collaborative and lively script on the meaning of art, nature and transformation.
The word is more than out that Standard Space will be leaving Sharon’s Main Street once the current exhibition, Fields of Snakes, ends on Sunday, December 21st. Founded by my husband Theo Coulombe in 2017, the little gallery that could not only brought us together but a whole community of artists, curators, collectors, and most importantly neighbors. To say the least, the showing of emotion by the community has been both endearing and heartbreaking. The decision to leave 147 Main Street was not easy but the Year of the Snake lead us to close one chapter and start a new one. It is therefore only fitting that the final show is a collaboration between Theo and artist Eve Biddle (also the co-founder of Wassaic Project). What was intended to be one of my traditional “In the Studio,” interviews with only Eve, quickly evolved into a collaborative script between her and Theo. My suggestion for reading would be to print two copies, find a friend to read the parts with you, and together dive into the world of creative collaborations and independent change.
Where did you grow up and what is your first impactful memory of art?
Eve: I grew up on the Lower East Side on 3rd Street between 2nd and 3rd Avenues. Both my parents were artists, so nearly all my memories have art in them. One of my earliest memories is of graffiti in New York, especially this one artist who made these black and white stretched images, like he was Xeroxing a photo and moving it as it copied. They were huge, like ten feet tall, painted around the East Village.
It reminded me later of people doing scan art, but this was pre-digital. He probably didn’t even have a Xerox machine. I remember when my mom finally got one; it was the size of a dresser, so she could make show announcements. I’d help her stuff envelopes.
I also remember printing in the darkroom with my dad. He made his own dodging and burning tools out of gaff tape and wire, and he’d assign me to help. I can never remember which was which. I think I’ve blocked out the technical stuff on purpose.
Theo: (laughs) Rebellious!
Eve: Exactly. We also had a place upstate in Wallkill. My parents built a barn to store work, mostly for my mom to use as a studio, and my dad would take photographs. There are so many beautiful photos of us up there. He held natural objects as though they were sculptures, and that really influenced my print work, the way I catalogue natural things as found sculpture.
My mom would place her sculptures around the property so we were literally living among art. They felt like guardians around the land.
Theo: Guardians of the Galaxy!
Eve: Exactly, our little galaxy. I also remember a day cross-country skiing with my dad and grandmother. Dad always had his Leica around his neck, my “third parent.” He threw a snowball, slipped, and the camera swung up and hit him in the forehead. I didn’t have my glasses on and told him he looked fine, meanwhile there was blood streaming down his face. He needed stitches. Sorry, Dad, love you. And all our holiday traditions were sculptural. For Hanukkah we made our own menorahs, actual sculpted pieces, not bolts glued to wood. For Christmas we strung cranberries and popcorn or rearranged a carved wooden crèche. I had no idea who Moses was until my teens, but I knew how to make a menorah on the bandsaw. Eventually I realized my family’s religion was art, and that made complete sense.
Eve: What about you, Theo, your first memory of art?
Theo: I grew up in Manhasset, NY and Fairfield, CT. My mother and father had come down from Maine; we are Franco American via Quebec, and my parents grew up speaking French. My father got a teaching job in Port Washington, and my mother’s best friend, Jeannine Petit, moved to the West Village around the same time. She was a painter with a basement studio in Greenwich Village.
Our mom and dad took us to museums, the theater, ballets, something different every month, but our visits to Jeannine had the biggest impact on me. She made me realize I wanted to be an artist even as a kid. I wasn’t confident though; my parents were supportive but were always working and as I was son number three they let things slide. When we eventually moved to Connecticut, I realized I really had no direction and a distaste for the suburbs.
Still, they kept taking us into the city. Once, in the 70’s, I saw Macbeth at Lincoln Center staring Christopher Walken. My dad got tickets from a grateful parent at his high school and we even had a limousine. Our seats were bad, so they moved us to the orchestra level where we got splattered with stage blood. It was amazing.
As a kid I was drawn to explosions and gasoline (probably anger issues) - my fathers garden was a battlefield. In museums like the Met I went straight to the armory room, I was obsessed with all things military then to the grand history paintings and all that high drama romantic stuff. I loved it.
Jeannine kept encouraging me. She was glamorous; I had champagne and caviar at her five floor walk-up on Charlton Street when I was ten. She’d ask what I wanted to be, and I said, “A ships commander with my own Man-o-War.” Funny enough, my oldest brother became a Commander in the Merchant Marine.
By high school, I was determined to go to art school. I got into Parsons School of Design but only on academic probation because I was a terrible student. I had to take remedial English with ESL students. It was the era when if you didn’t make the cut in Freshman Year, you were out. I stuck with photography, got fast-tracked into that department, but by the end of my first semester they told me to take a 12-month leave of absence. I never went back. Found out a few years later that my sea captain brother paid for my first year. No one ever told me until he did.
Eve: When was that?
Theo: 1981. My parents couldn’t afford room and board for me, so I commuted from Fairfield every day. After a few weeks, I started staying with friends at the Union Square dorms. Funny story, twenty years later I interviewed for a teaching job at New School University. The assistant head of the photo department said, “Did you go to Parsons in ’81? Do you remember me? We flew kites at Battery Park together in Industrial Design.” We’d been classmates!
Eve: That’s amazing. When did you teach there?
Theo: From about 2003 to 2007 or 2008.
Eve: You just missed my dad; he was assistant chair of the photo department in the ’90s.
Theo: That’s wild. The former Chair at New School, Robert Ransick, really had faith in me and invited me to apply for a continuing ed, adjunct gig. When I told my dad I’d been hired, he said, “Isn’t that funny? That’s the way the world works. Oh, don’t get involved in school politics.” Within a year I was teaching at Eugene Lang College a program called Arts in Context. I really love teaching. After three years some adjuncts were unionizing the part-time faculty. I didn’t join because I had my own studio income, and I lost the job because of it. They prioritized senior teachers.
When did you know you wanted to pursue your career in art? What path did you take to become an artist?
Eve: Our paths kind of echo each other. I grew up surrounded by art but rebelled against it. I actually went into college as a math major and thought about law. I still think about law. I’m good at solving problems within clear parameters.
After school I worked as a scenic painter and carpenter, making other people’s ideas. It drove me crazy. That’s when I realized I can’t do this for others, only for myself. Ironically, now I do help realize other artists’ ideas, but I think of it as collaboration, not service.
I never went to grad school. I was rejected from seven programs the same year I started the Wassaic Project, and that was the best thing that ever happened to me.
Theo: You made your own grad school.
Eve: Exactly. Traditional grad school would’ve crushed me.
Theo: I had no interest in grad school, though later I did it. I’m the second person in my entire family with a graduate degree. My dad was the first.
Eve: My grandmother used to say she was “a statistics class away from a PhD,” but she hated math. My mom and I loved it. Mom’s parents were self-made entrepreneurs, children of immigrants. My grandfather, Bill Unger, was the “U” in EUE, one of the first commercial film production houses referenced in Mad Men. He and his partners even made Christmas-card portraits in costume. My grandmother, Dorothy, was a speech therapist who worked into her 80s; she just never saw a reason to stop.
Theo: That’s incredible. I actually applied to SUNY Purchase for theater arts, stage design, but was talked out of it. Recruiters were pushing the military, which I thankfully avoided since Vietnam had just ended. I ended up in Parsons almost by accident.
My portfolio was terrible, but they took me. After dropping out, I went to trade school and became a carpenter like all my best friends. A few years later, we all ended up in college and graduated around 1990.
That’s when I moved to Budapest. Living there taught me what it really meant to be an artist, being in a country where the government supports artists with stipends so they can live and make work. It was better than grad school.
Eve: Where did you eventually go?
Theo: Cranbrook Academy in Michigan. Even when I was working as a carpenter in New Haven, I was hanging out at galleries, meeting artists. I had a mohawk and leather jacket, getting arrested, living wildly. People kept saying, “You’ve got to meet Carl Toth at Cranbrook.” He’d been a star in the ’70s, then disappeared into teaching.
When I finally met him, he said, “I’ve got fifteen minutes.” Three hours later, he said, “You’re in.” I chose Cranbrook over Yale or Chicago because it was cheaper, about $7,500 a year instead of $25,000. It was the best decision I ever made.
Eve: That’s amazing.
Theo: It was. Now let’s pause and eat.
Regarding the exhibition, what is the inspiration behind these works and how do they relate to one another's?
Eve: I think Theo and I have both been making work about land and nature for decades. There’s been a kind of parallel practice. We’ve known each other for almost ten years, and during that time there’s been an artistic dialogue by proximity. You can’t help but be in conversation when you’re living and working alongside each other.
Theo: Especially with you. Were you already making the snake pieces before you moved up here full time?
Eve: Yes, though they became more representational once I moved up here. That move coincided with quarantine and COVID, a period defined by renewal, rebirth, and also by facing death. Everything really circles back to death.
Theo: Death, yes, everything is about death. For me, I’d come up here to visit or to the Hamptons, spend time in the landscape, start photographing, and realize this is what excites me most right now. Then I’d go back to the city and feel how reluctant I was to leave that space, in terms of my work, not my life. I love the city, I love Brooklyn.
Someone asked recently if my work was a self-portrait. I said “no,” but an hour later thought, “Of course it is, everything is.”
Eve: Exactly.
Theo: Before moving here, I worked for the Park Service in Maine, alongside being a carpenter. I completely resonated with that environment, even though all I wanted was to go to art school, which, it turns out, isn’t incompatible.
When I came here, I had the equipment and materials I needed. I went out and made landscapes. Technically they worked, but after a while I realized they weren’t speaking to me; they were too conventional. Like that barn image over there, beautiful but expected.
Then one day I photographed a foggy, ambiguous scene and thought, this is it. That image, which could be primordial or abstracted, became about how natural motifs mirrored my emotional landscape. The fog became a liminal space that reflected that interiority.
Eve: There’s a timelessness in this exhibition, in both your work and mine. The gestures could be ancient or made yesterday. That’s a beautiful conversation happening between them.
Theo: Yes. And part of that is eliminating modern pressure. Landscapes and snakes exist outside of time. Remember the pre-Greek snake dancers? They held snakes, danced with them, even rode bulls while holding them.
Eve: Not the Etruscans, the Minoans?
Theo: Exactly. The goddess from Crete holding a snake in each hand.
Eve: Right, the Bronze Age. It’s ancient history, but it still resonates.
Theo: Totally. There’s also that story from Thebes, The Sacred Band, 150 male couples forming a 300-person elite army. Their leader used a snake as a metaphor for defeating an enemy army. The philosophy was: don’t follow the rules, strike directly, cut the snakes head off. Kill the enemy leader, the body thrashes, it can’t concentrate and you defeat them. The Sacred Band were the gods of the battlefield for 40 years.
Which piece in the exhibition is your favorite and why?
Theo: I do have a favorite, maybe this one, no, actually that one. It’s hard to choose. I love one of the black clay snake vessels. Honestly, picking a favorite feels impossible.
Eve: I love the dripping snake, the glossy black one on the central pedestal to the right. It’s austere, almost ceremonial. There’s a joy in the collaborative works too, the literal mash-ups. What I hoped for in these collaborations really came through, leaning into that sense of time.
Theo: You said, “Throw them into the mud.”
Eve: I did, and I still think we should! We’ll do it together so you don’t have to worry about it.
Theo: Oh, I’m not worried about throwing them in the mud, just about moving my 8×10 camera each time. Unless you shoot from ground level, the objects look small, diminished. We’ll have to find the right muddy hill.
Eve: A muddy hill with trees in the background.
Theo: I have two black and a white chairs from the artist, Shantell Martin she wants them photographed in a landscape, I still haven’t done it. “Landscape with Props.”
Eve: That’s our next field trip.
Theo: The snakes!
As the gallery prepares to leave Sharon, CT, how does it feel to be in Standard Space’s final exhibition at 147 Main Street?
Theo: Since this is the last show in this space, I feel honored and lucky, and sad, but excited. I’m glad Eve and I could collaborate in this final exhibition.
When I started the gallery, I exhibited only artists I knew in Brooklyn, a limited circle. Then, Camille Roccanova came on board and said, you should talk to the people at Wassaic, and to Ghost of a Dream, Will Hutnick, you (Eve), Jeff Barnett-Winsby, and Josh Frankel. Camille really helped set the course that established connections in Connecticut, the Hudson Valley, back home to NYC and beyond.
The gallery was growing conceptually, which is the real measure of success. The goal was dialogue with the community and that’s when Victoria Hood walked into the gallery in late 2018. Victoria came in to talk about the artist John-Paul Philippe exhibiting at Troutbeck, her client at the time. Then we did a trade, one of my landscapes for three months of PR work. Best trade ever. A year after that we started dating (no point in mentioning COVID). Victoria became the editorial voice and PR punch Standard Space needed. Who knew I’d meet the love of my life in the woods of Connecticut. With Victoria I’ve somehow reached a level of happiness I didn’t think possible. Good on us!
Eve: That’s really beautiful.
Theo: The gallery isn’t dying, it’ll live as a website, updated and maintained, with pop-up shows to come, perhaps two to four a year.
We also hosted the Sharon Center School’s annual K–8 art show every spring, which meant a lot to me and the town. People come up to me at gas stations saying, “You’re that little art boutique down the road!” and tell me their kid or grandchild showed work here. That’s the best kind of reward.
We had a year of photography exhibitions planned, and others in the works. I owe a lot of artists follow-ups. Maybe someday. Unfortunately, this space, ideal, small but perfect, is closing, and that’s beyond our control. But when one door closes, another opens.
Eve: Or a trapdoor opens.
Theo: Exactly. One trapdoor opens, you fall through, land, and another opens. And you’re somewhere new.
Last but not least, what do you have next on the horizon?
Theo: Landscapes with props. Let’s go.
Eve: Yes, outdoor work. My most recent pieces are already outside. Objects and props in the landscape. Maybe even something involving fire.
Theo: If you had vents at the bottom, you could have flames coming out. I’ll poke holes in the next one.
Eve: Perfect.
STANDARD SPACE
147 Main Street, Sharon, CT, 06069
Open Friday - Sunday from 12-5pm
&
By Appointment from Tuesday-Thursday
Artist Talk on Saturday, December 13th at 10am
