Open studio My studio practice has been mostly non-existent this past year. All of 2023 was spent preparing for the solo show I had last spring. I had intentions for that show. I would post every day on Instagram and weekly on the blog. It didn’t happen. Mostly because over the past several years I […]
Studio Matters
A Room of One’s (My) Own
Years ago, I read Virginia Wolff’s book, A Room of One’s Own. In it, she posits that in order for a woman to do creative work she needs space of her own and her own money. I’ve been lucky to have had a studio space, even if it was sometimes part of the living room, […]
Studio Challenge – Week 4 – Put it all back together
Spring is officially here, and we are wrapping up our studio challenge just in time. Now for the fun part. Since we finished de-cluttering and cleaning, it’s time to re-create our space. A few years back I did a major overhaul of my studio, but it can still use some tweaking. Mine is a multi-use […]
Studio Challenge – Week 3
Joshua Milburn and Ryan Nicodemus from The Minimalists blog, posit that organizing is well-planned hoarding. It’s just organized hoarding. If we don’t do the work to ask questions about whether we truly need and use something, and about what it means to us to have it in terms of preserving illusions about ourselves, etc., we […]
Week 2 – Studio Challenge – your art materials
This week we’ll focus on raw materials and tools. Art supplies! The phrase can send shivers down our spines and give us goosebumps. Who doesn’t love to get new materials? It can be stimulating when you’re in a slump. It can feel like a win to get a lot of something you need on […]
Studio Challenge Week 1 – Where is your art?
One of the biggest obstacles to decluttering, cleaning and staying organized is knowing who we are at any given time. You are not the same artist you were in your 20s or 30s and yet you may have artwork, materials, and ideas that you’ve hung on to since then. Our subjects, materials, and processes change. […]
Clean vs Cluttered – join the clean studio challenge
We all have our preferences. Some studios are cluttered like Francis Bacon’s (well, few are probably that cluttered), and some are pristine. What works best for you? Do you know or is it by default that your studio looks the way it does? Several years ago, I did a massive de-clutter and upgrade to my […]
The purge
Sometimes it’s good to look back at what you’ve done, and sometimes it’s just good to get rid of it. Recently I had to disassemble the flat file I use for storage and I decided to take the opportunity to purge some things I’ve accumulated over the years. When I was in university I discovered the surplus […]
The big reveal & a last minute re-do
This is the last post for the Studio Makeover and De-Clutter month. Congratulations and thank-you to all who participated. After I was 90% finished with the studio makeover, and had already cleaned up, we decided to re-do a wall. There were holes in the sheetrock where we once planned to move a water pipe for […]
Hiding stuff from people can be a good thing
Week 4 and one more week to go in the Studio Makeover and De-Clutter Challenge so now it’s time to HIDE stuff. I don’t mind a mess when I’m working since I’m focused on what I’m doing. But for an open studio one of my challenges is to hide all the stuff I use, or […]
Playing in the mud can be productive
The end of procrastination. Not. I never finished mudding, texturizing and painting the wall we put up to replace the pegboard in 2009. So I decided it was time. I also decided I’d paint it something other than white. Doing my research I got a gazillion color swatches from Lowe’s and I even used the free […]
Been there, done that
We bought this house with the idea that I’d use the garage as my studio. Two car garage. Nice space. But it was very dark and uninviting since there was no natural light. So the first thing we did was to put in a side entrance door with glass. My dear husband did it […]