Like a glacier, I've slowly been creeping into adjacent spaces at home to expand the studio... it now includes all the original studio space (that I used to share with my husband), plus the family room, and extends to the back porch on especially nice days! The two adjoining rooms had never had the same paint or carpet colors so this fall I had the entire space re-carpeted with industrial gray and painted an art-friendly white. What a huge difference. While this project was going on, all the studio furniture and art-making gear was moved and somehow compressed, stacked floor to ceiling, into our dining room.All this upheaval gave me the opportunity to get rid of things that weren't serving me well, re-integrate items that had returned from my previous out-of-house studio, and re-think how I store the somewhat shocking amounts of paper that I like to have on hand.I've slowly been moving things back into the studio space and am now almost finished, with my deadline being asap, so that we can dine without debris for Thanksgiving!Switching up the way I'd previously used the rooms, plus a new furniture arrangement seems more efficient and allows the luxury of being able to get farther away from my work for the long-view perspective. I'll post some final photos/video soon. Unseen in these photos, right now the detached brick garage outside the windows is also under construction (a whole other story).I am so excited to begin working in this "new" space. Even so, I'm sure that I'll also spend some time at the Art Gym each week just to get out and be around other artists.Speaking of creative spaces... this morning I was re-reading a lovely essay by the poet Mary Oliver about the time, space and focus usually required to keep the thread of an idea moving forward."No one yet has made a list of places where the extraordinary may happen and where it may not. Still, there are indications. Among crowds, in drawing rooms, among easements and comforts and pleasures, it is seldom seen. It likes the out-of-doors. It likes the concentrating mind. It likes solitude. It is more likely to stick to the risk-taker than the ticket-taker. It isn’t that it would disparage comforts, or the set routines of the world, but that its concern is directed to another place. Its concern is the edge, and the making of a form out of the formlessness that is beyond the edge."The whole essay, titled "The Artist's Task," is here... a good read and applicable to most any creative pursuit.SaveSaveSaveSaveSaveSave
