A new year, a new studio!

It's true...I'm moving to a private studio! I'm in the final stretch now of sorting through my belongings and shifting my workspace to a new space! After 13 years in my current space, it is bittersweet to open a new chapter!

I don’t know about you, but I consider myself a collector. I’m a collector of fine things, a collector of junk, collector of antiques, collector of art and specially collector of art supplies. I’m also a collector of random bags and boxes full of all the same items: receipts, business cards, a few paintbrushes, art supplies and random memorabilia. I’ve been finding these things as I have been cleaning out everything I’ve ever owned. I don’t know about you, but I’ve never cleaned out everything I’ve ever owned. I just simply move it from one location to the other and eventually find things. For example, I have found recently that I own no less than 10 pencil sharpeners because I could not find the pencil sharpeners when I needed them. I have found tape measures stuck in every nook and cranny, like a squirrel hiding away my food for the winter except it’s tape measures and pencil sharpeners!

Actual items from my studio...I didn't make this up!

It’s silly to find a tape measure in the basket of lotions and soaps under my sink (which I did the other day!) but apparently that’s how I’ve operated for many years. As I seek now to simplify and focus and to clean up my art practice a little bit, I’m excited at this new prospect of having everything I need and knowing where it is. While this is a (duh!) thought for most people, this is an interesting new thought for me. I have notoriously never put things back in the same place...which is why pencil sharpeners inhabit every drawer every nook and cranny except the art bag that the rest of my supplies are in. As I clean and purge and sift through my belongings, I am excited and I’m feeling lighter already! Things that I’ve tucked away for years I can either use because I know where they are or give away, donate or sell.

A note on collecting:

Over the holidays I went to the home of some people who are incredible collectors. They had collections of all kinds of things ranging from art, furniture, dishes, you name it.Their house was a living, breathing extension of who they are as people. I loved walking around the house with them and hearing the stories of why they had collected certain things, what it meant to them and where and why they bought it. It was a fantastic house unlike anything I’ve seen before! I love the idea of homes really being an extension of who we are. Can someone walk into your home and learn something about you as a person? Do you have art and artifacts from your life that mean something and say something about you? I’m not saying all your art must be original…but it should be intentional. Is your home filled with specific things that reflect your personality? This was part of our discussion last November for the OU Center for Democracy and Culture series. Can someone learn something about you when they enter your home and see what interests you and what is important to you? That was definitely the case at this home visit I went on over Christmas! In the case of my own home, as I continually bring paintings and boxes of pencil sharpeners and tape measures home from the studio, I realize how much more it feels like “home.” It’s as if the gallery was a caterpillar and suddenly transformed into a butterfly overnight into my home! It’s been a wonderful experience to see it come to life in a completely different environment. For me, the gallery was always about the whole atmosphere. The colors, having furniture and a warm welcoming environment were always paramount to the feeling I wanted to create there.

The caterpillar and the butterfly:

Now I feel like that is what I have in my home and I’m thrilled to be able to live here and create here in this new space! It’s hard moving from a space where I occupied an insane amount of territory…filled it up with treasures (and trash!) and now I’m moving. The thing about the caterpillar and butterfly is you no longer see the caterpillar once the time comes for it to turn into the butterfly. But the trade off…it’s worth it. I know this transformation will be too!