The Pseudo Studio
For the last few months my partner Gratian (@Gratian.art) and I have been renovating our studio to make it more functional. We are multi-media artists working across disciplines so you can imagine how many supplies we’ve accumulated over the years. Unfortunately our supplies overtook our workspace and we were relegated to about 10 square inches of desk space each. Not conducive for creating, and I don’t know about you but I literally cannot function in a chaotic, disorganized space. It’s not so much a studio as it as a 10’x10’ junk drawer and catch-all and it’s absolutely draining my creative life-force.
Wish I had somewhere to use all of these amazing materials… oh wait
Our respective hobbies are abundant- from embroidery to block printing, to guitar, keys, animation, illustration, oil painting, polymer sculpting, sticker-making, market-vending, mural painting, canvas-hoarding and more things than I care to list here because I’m sure other artists are reading this and can already relate. All of that to say, sorting through our clutter has been daunting, exhausting and very uncomfortable as I stare out into my dining room at piles of boxes, folding tables and crusty old canvases. I feel like I’m in purgatory, forced to reflect on all of my abandoned projects while they scream at me “Why aren’t you using us?” There are a few reasons 1.) I can’t find anything and 2.) there’s no space to do it. See figure below:
Having a cat who steals the only office chair also doesn’t help.
Stage 1:
THE PURGE// Death of Sentiment
Has anyone heard of Swedish Death Cleaning? You basically just rid yourself of any worldly possessions that you wouldn’t want to burden your family with having to sort through, were you met with an untimely demise. It makes sense in theory, I would never want my family to suffer the hell of trying to clean this studio, but surely they would see the same potential as I do in my box of broken picture frames, or my scraps of fabric I’m saving for upholstery mending. Those old publications of National Geographic with all the good photos cut out of them is perfect for a collage night that never seems to happen… Those polymer clay ornaments that I painstakingly hand painted and coated in sticky resin that didn’t set properly… It’s all so hard to let go of. Why?
I think we attach ourselves to things because we like the idea of the person who would use them. The up-cyclers, the hobbyists who can turn something destined for the trash into something useful. Like any artist, we want to breathe new life into objects and items, but it’s kinda hard to breathe when the walls are closing in on you, so we save what we can and find places for the rest.
A fresh start.
So far we’ve installed some peg boards for keeping our most frequently used materials within reach, painted the walls (and the ceilings a little bit lol), we’ve decluttered, categorized, donated what we can and saved only what we need and will realistically use within our lifetime. There are still boxes of picture frames lining the floor, tote bags holding more tote bags, crusty dusty canvases to re-prime… but we’re finally getting somewhere.
LFG