Tour of My Art Studio Apartment in Paris

Last year, I took all of you along with me on one of the biggest adventures of my entire life. Oh my god! The search and creation of a home. And it's been a doozy, honestly. My whole life has revolved around this over the last year and a half. In the last four episodes in this series, I've taken you along the ride on how I found this apartment and was able to convince a bank that... you know, give me a loan and make this all happen. I did an apartment tour of the empty space showing kind of the before. This is the cheapest Ikea mattress I could find on top of an air mattress. I explained how I financed this project and the mistakes and learnings that came with that. And then I also shared the extremely chaotic renovations and work that was done in this space. And now it is time. to bring that whole chapter to a close and show you the final result. It's now been nine months since I've gotten the keys to this place and there have been countless hours poured into creating this space. It would appear this is going to be a very long and slow process. We are? Yeah. The wall still has nothing on it. It's a plan in action. How many days have we been working on this? It's an artist's journey. I know where I got this from. Genetically. From the very beginning, this apartment has been very symbolic for me. It's been about so much more than just having a place to live. It's been about this project of creating a sense of community that I've been working on for years now to connect with a lot of other creative people, to share ideas, to do the 21st century version of the salons that were done in this city in centuries past. Honestly, I realized that there is a real joy in Not just having that, but capturing that and sharing that. And so this video marks the end of a chapter. It marks the end of the journey that I've been on to get here, to create the space, and the beginning of a new chapter, a new project, which is the launch of a podcast. Paintings are kind of a dialogue between either me and the painting, or me and the subject, or more often, the painting and the viewer. Can you expand on that idea a little bit? I've never heard that. I'm gonna talk more about that in the weeks to come. I'm really excited about it, but you're here for a tour of the apartment. So a tour is what I will give. This is my living room space. Every design choice that was made in this apartment came with the thinking that like, I want to make a physical representation of my values. And so at the top of this list is Beauty I'm so happy with how this has come out. Oh, you're in the mirror right now. Oh, yeah This is gonna be tricky With this mirror you can see the entirety of the apartment actually I don't know if you're able to maybe if you raise the camera up a little bit. Yeah, there you go I like how it distorts everything is my face stretched So I really wanted this living room space to be cozy as fuck especially in winter time I think it's really valuable to have a warm space. For example, I mean I don't have them on right now because we're shooting with the daylight, but there's a couple of lights here that add a little bit of hazelich. We've got the candles burning. Because you know what? We're on a romantic date right now. It's nice to have a bunch of lights and lamps everywhere. Also because the days are really short in Paris in wintertime. The view from this living room is all the way down. to the kitchen here. It's all one connected space. So, you know what? You want to go sit on the couch over there just to show what the view is all the way over? You're rolling still? Okay, cool. You can just like talk to the person all the way over on the couch while you're cooking eggs or whatever, you know? And it's kind of cool to have this space that is well adapted to like little... Soirees six to eight people right in the middle here. We have this table. It's very versatile You know what I mean like there's kind of a lot of detail in depth and that's That's kind of cool to have and then over here. I've got my Desk set up. I don't have a chair for it. I just mainly use this one honestly I've got enough chairs. I don't really feel like buying anymore and it's actually a standing desk So let me let me show you how this looks this tour is gonna be all over the place, and that's okay That's kind of how it goes One of the advantages of having the whole space be connected is you can kind of jump from the kitchen to the living room to the office With like six steps at a time. There you go standing set up You know, it's only about 10 centimeters taller standing versus sitting. Okay, stupid short joke. All right. I mean after years basically of traveling around and having to adapt to the most ridiculous little corners to do my editing, it's really nice to have a little bit of space and I'm just realizing that this is the same desktop background as the photo right there. So I'm gonna have to change that. I just recently put that up. I've taken more than one good photo. Two, two. Yeah. felt to protect underneath otherwise after about a week there would be a million scratches on the ground well adapted for evening work sessions as well although be mindful of work-life balance okay all right so stupid before i go any further with the tour of this apartment i want to briefly talk about the sponsor of this video whose support of this channel has helped fund the transformation of this space and that is NordVPN. I actually have a funny little story to tell about Nord. Some of you may know that my family comes from Argentina. Some of you may also know that Argentina are world champions after having won the World Cup. And that's something that I didn't think I was going to see ever in my life. That is until about a month ago. And I had the incredible good fortune to actually watch the final with my parents. And that was such a beautiful experience. Something I'm going to remember for the rest of my life. Now, Peacock, the streaming service, had coverage of all the matches and was a great way to follow along throughout that crazy month. However, it's only available in the United States, so being in Paris, ordinarily I wouldn't have access. That is, without a VPN. Enter NordVPN, who not only made that possible, but really easy and seamless. Thanks to Nord, I was able to watch Argentina beat the Netherlands on this very screen. Okay, in this very apartment. That was pretty cool. Another huge plus is that you can use a VPN to get sometimes better prices for bookings depending on where your IP address is. And they've also recently added the anti-malware feature called threat protection which is integrated into the VPN. Plus there's a 30-day money-back guarantee. So if you're interested, check out NordVPN.com slash NathanielDrew and I'll leave a link in the description. Thank you to Nord for sponsoring this video and honestly thank you to all of you for tuning in and for all the support. Without you guys, I definitely wouldn't be here. And having said all that, let's keep going with the tour. Honestly, this is helping me just light this apartment right now on these winter afternoons. However, I've got a wonderful little console table here. It's just useful to have a couple of drawers to store random objects so that they're not visually cluttering. You know what I like about this tour? What? It's showing how having a permanent space with drawers, for example, is like a... A discovery for you? Yeah, dude. It's indicative of the kind of life you've been living for I don't know how many years now. Yeah. This coffee machine is just so cool to have. You know, you don't really think about it, but coffee costs a lot of money when you are going out and buying it every day. And to be able to basically have a store of oat milk and, you know, all the materials I need and then, you know, you buy a chunk of ground-up coffee. There's like a hundred coffees in this bag, you know, and I probably got it for like two, three euros. There's a joy in that. There's a joy in these Tupperwares. Honestly, like I can put leftovers after a meal in this, put it in the fridge. Boom shakalaka, you know, but it's so cool. It's really cool. I love my cacti. Look at my cacti right there. This brings me joy. I just, I wake up each day and I stare at them for Longer than I should because I haven't killed them yet by accident because cacti are hard killed This a lot of this is thanks to my mama who has an incredibly developed eye for this sort of thing She really helped me create this sort of rustic feel It was scary because this kitchen already looked pretty decent when I got it, you know But it didn't feel like mine so taking down all the cupboards that were here before you know there was a microwave I know for a lot of people it's like you got rid of a microwave but I don't know. I don't really use microwaves. I think they're kind of ugly. So to replace that with these shelves and these beautiful brackets and this new tile set up here and just to have everything on display, I'm so pleased. It feels good. I do want to thank Onomeo for sending me some of these beautiful cups. Oh, oh, sorry! One thing, one important thing. I want to talk briefly about this frame, which is empty. It's an intentional artistic decision here because I want to encourage viewers to fill in the space with their imagination. It's an exercise that- I'm just kidding. I haven't figured out what I want to put inside it, but it's such a magnificent frame that like there's pressure. You know, you can't just put whatever in the middle of that. I mean the frame itself is a piece of art. Mahogany. You know, the thickness is ridiculous. I've never seen a frame this thick. I mean, look at that. It's a thick boy. This is the entrance area that connects the whole apartment. So there's new wainscoting around the entirety of the apartment. But I have to say, I think it stands out the most in the entrance area because it's the first thing you see. Really nice to have this right here. Finally after having about a bajillion shoes just like you you walk in let me demonstrate actually okay demonstration you'd walk in here and like Really good demonstration. I definitely had a career as an actor waiting for me if this didn't work out So this is really cool to have everything just nice and orderly and on top of it. This is a custom-built cupboard to hide non aesthetically pleasing stuff. Electrical shit going on here, but you don't want to see that as the first thing that you see when you step into the apartment. Also so nice to have this. The vacuum cleaner. Whoop! Where did it go? I don't know. You tell me. Main bedroom. What can I say about this place? So this is the main bedroom and it's not a giant room, but two things really made this space feel more expansive. The first is originally there were cupboards. all along here that we took down. The other was that this room was painted brown, which is a dark color and I think really made the space feel smaller. Having it be the kind of off-white eggshell color that unifies the entirety of the apartment really made this place feel peaceful and expansive. On the sixth floor you never have details like the wainscoting or the crown molding or even like these nice baseboards. And... I just wanted to bring some of the charm that's more typical like the second or third or the fourth floor to the sixth floor. Check out this cupboard. Toilet, not a ton to say because it is a toilet. Its roll is clear. We all know what it's here for. What am I saying right now? Here's one of the things that Nathan by himself attached to the wall. Is it holding? Pretty well. Bro, that does not look good. Look, it's not straight anymore. Oh, God. You know what? I'm not here to be criticized, okay? The bathroom here was already magnificent. I love these tiles so much. All that really needed to be done was to add a space to hang towels, change the color of this. It was like a peach color before. And now I feel like this off-white really helps bring these tiles to life. So having everything organized exactly where I want it to be has been... Such a blessing. I know where my toilet paper is. I know where my cleaning supplies are and On to the room that might have had the most transformation of them all. This is the second room the guest room the art room. I want this to be a space for creativity and Self-expression and to receive people I care about it took some creativity because really this space is really not big. It's really not But again knocking down some of the storage space here was huge open it up a little bit and then I found a couch that opens up and is just barely big enough to fit in here and even a couple could come and stay here. It's like the smallest bed I think you could let a couple sleep in. I also added this desk here. Alright, let's do a little demonstration really quick. Did you hear the sound of that? That was beautiful. It's really cool to have a separate space if someone needs to be away from the work that's being done in the living room, take a call or whatever. I mean, like, look, I had to really be creative. The layout of this room makes absolutely no sense. Like, why is there an indent here? Also, what was this originally for? Like, look at this. I've got to give credit to my friend and very skilled carpenter, Jean, for all of his gorgeous woodwork all throughout the apartment, as well as these fabulous cupboards that he custom-made to maximize the space that I have. I now use them to store my gear so that it doesn't create visual clutter. Without him, this apartment wouldn't be what it is. If you're ever interested in working with the guy, I'll leave a link to his info in the description. He was a pleasure to work with. Finally, if you've made it this far into the tour, I want to share with you a little more insight into the artwork all throughout the apartment. Do you feel good to go? I'm ready. In the home that I grew up in, it was always encouraged to make things and display them, to give color to your environment. One of the greatest joys of setting up this space was putting on display art that I have captured or created over the years. Alright, let's do it. This wall is looking epic! So here are some of the most meaningful pieces, starting with one that I didn't even make. Created by my very, very talented mother, she painted... a mountain goat because I've always found them to be such incredibly beautiful creatures. It's really cool to be able to put something up that was made by somebody I care about so much. This was a still I captured on film in Iceland during a road trip in the summer of 2021 with my dad, where after difficult experiences had pushed us apart a few years prior, we reconnected. This is from the end of the 19th century. It's from the period of Napoleon III, Napoleon III. This is a film photo that I captured during the pandemic my last apartment where I spent the lockdowns alone. This is what I looked at during those long months. This still really captures the difficult first couple of years that I spent living in Paris, full of doubt. Honestly, it is a bit of a painful memory, but it's not something I want to forget because it's really good contrast for the life that I have now. I guess while it was getting developed, some light leaked in and a large chunk of the still Like the details are lost. Something about how this was captured really represented for me the passing of time and the fading of memories. Some of you might already recognize this one. It's a still that I captured after the sun had set of a man at an ice cream shop in Rome in the summer of 2018. A time I thought a lot about the preciousness of life. Hence the reason it became the cover art for the single Memento Mori released a couple of years ago. Memento Mori being... Composed by Tom Fox for this channel. It's been so incredible to see the reaction. It has actually passed 1 million streams on Spotify, which is unbelievable. It's so cool that people are enjoying that outside of these videos. So this painting is one that I made while living in Mexico. This is a Mexican boy that I photographed standing at the back of a truck that was right in front of me and he just appeared briefly. For some reason, that visual enchanted me. And I was just like, wow, what is his life? Where is he going? And the thought that we are likely never to cross paths again, and that this sort of brief intersection was taking place, and that I captured it with my camera, it really stuck with me. So I ended up painting that still, adding this frame and putting it up on the wall of this room. I can't explain to you the joy that that has brought me. I think that's a good place to end things. Thank you so much for your support. and for following along on this adventure. I'll see you soon.

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Featured in this video:

Stream Memento Mori → https://open.spotify.com/artist/6WYhTsOkDtjLcZlwSrpBGm?si=GNzDnOK3QluO-mv4CNKLiQ

Thank you to Ono Mao → http://bit.ly/3DlpSjd

my blog/newsletter → https://nathanieldrew.substack.com/
second channel → https://www.youtube.com/@nobackupplan
instagram → https://www.instagram.com/nathanieldrew_/
online courses → https://www.nathanieldrew.com/onlinecourses
music → https://johnny-harris-x-tom-fox.disco.ac/cat/1632843844


Timestamps:

00:00 - Intro
02:27 - Tour Begins: Living Room
04:35 - Desk Setup
05:48 - Sponsor (NordVPN)
07:29 - Kitchen/Small Joys
10:16 - Entrance
11:20 - Main Bedroom
12:20 - Bathroom/Toilet
13:09 - Art Studio
14:39 - Art in the apartment