Hi everyone- My name is Bailey Kinsky and I am the sole owner and conservator of Valkyrie Conservation here in Stillwater, MN. My studio is located at my residence in a renovated garage loft. I live with my husband Owen and our three rescue cats: Loki, Wicket, and Minerva (Mini).
I knew even before I left for my Art Conservation program in 2015 that my goal was to set up a private practice as soon as possible after graduating. My most formative training in book prior to grad school was with Mark Andersson who owns Panther Peak Bindery in Tucson, AZ. He really the set the ground work for me to become a conservator and binder, and opened my eyes to the freedom that private conservation allows for.
I graduated in September of 2018 and moved back home to Saint Paul, MN after spending a year interning at the Library of Congress. While Owen and I looked for our first home to buy so I could begin building my studio, I volunteered a few days a week at the Minnesota Historical Society in order to keep up my hand skills and get to know the other conservators in the area. We purchased our home in Stillwater and moved in March of 2019. The garage space that I intended to use for the studio had been half finished when we purchased, so I slowly started to make plans for renovation. I officially registered Valkyrie Conservation as a business in the summer of 2019 as I became the conservation consultant for St. Olaf College’s Hong Kierkegaard Library. I was also brought on as a part-time contract conservator at the Minnesota Historical Society. So work on the studio kind of slowed as my time was devoted to those projects.
Then Covid hit. In mid May 2020, I was laid off from MNHS. This was actually a relief because I was having to work remotely for the book and paper lab, and had very little to do. I felt guilty not being able to complete the conservation treatments I was hired to do because no one was allowed in the labs. Unfortunately, a lot of people in the museum field were furloughed or laid off during this time, and only time will tell how we come out on the other side. The silver lining was that I then had a ton of free time to being work on the studio.
Fortunately, I was not left alone to do the job myself. Owen and his father, Tim, put in hours and hours of work demolishing the wall between the finished and unfinished portions. They then worked about a week in the humid heat insulating and walling in the new half. With the assistance of one of my good friend Stephanie Cashman I repainted the space in neutral gray and white. It was such a relief to be done with the sky blue and peach walls that originally graced the space. While there is still plenty of aesthetic work to be done this winter (base boards and ceiling trim) we managed to double the work space and make it quite pleasant. The space is about 450 sq. ft. and was large enough for Owen and I to build a 5’ x 5’ work table in addition to my workbench. Maybe in a future post I will talk about some of the equipment and storage I have in the space. Come by for a visit sometime (with a mask of course)!
Skol!