I’ve never been a New Year’s resolutions type. I see the purpose of it, fresh changes to set from a January starting line, but, clearly, it is just another consumerist season: join our gym; you need this juicer; don’t wait till Summer to get that bikini body… FUCK!!!!!! Can’t we have just one month of peace and relief after the holidays? The stores get their little jab at us too, by putting all Christmas decorations on price blast...before the leftover ham is gone, the display for next year has doubled in size and new overfilled totes will start proliferating in your Mom’s garage. Yeah, I guess I kind of hate all of the hype, but now that I am typing 18 in place of 17, I’ve laid out a few goals that I’d like to make. I refuse to call them New Year’s Resolutions, instead, I declare my 2018 Get Shit Together List. The ‘Shit’ on this list varies from casual desires to tough transitions: I want to learn and set a daily routine for Yoga; I hope to be a real-life organized person that knows where all my mail went; and I’m nervously waiting to jump off the ledge into going vegetarian (except seafood, if you took oysters away from me there’d be no reason to live)
I am not putting any pressure on myself. If I don’t get all these boxes checked this year, that’s OK, but having some goals to reach is, at the very least, a good practice in self-discipline. I only named a few of my grandiose plans to bad-assify my life, there are many more. I am happy to report that I have completed one very important task, all before my Christmas tree was thrown to it’s grave down the wooded hill behind my house- which is usually the first triumph of the new year. Looking over my plans and projects for my art, I knew the one step I had to take first..I did some of that sit-on-your-butt-with-your-feet-against-the-furniture moving technique and spent hours going through chaotic boxes of paint… until finally, I have a totally revamped studio. It’s not my dream sanctuary, with a concrete floor and good ventilation to keep the fumes from forming something in my lungs, but it is still my own, bona-fide, usable studio. Well, if we are getting technical, it’s a corner...in the living room...in my den. I’m not picky, it’s better than what I had before, in fact, this is my first actual studio space. In years prior, I had a teeny square in my bedroom and my supplies were scattered into all sorts of incomprehensible places in closets and cupboards. I had a cheap particle board drafting table from a yard sale, which didn’t move up or down, yet has hinges (huh?). I used an old bookshelf for some of my supplies and gradually coffee cups and crumpled receipts starting getting caught between a nightmare of random pots and tins that held scarce amounts of tools. Usually I’d sit criss-cross on the couch to draw out my projects and when things got messy, I’d give up using my crappy drafting table stuffed away in my room and opt for the open space of my living room, sitting on the floor while I painted the seldom projects I got to with such an inconvenient space. My coffee table has a decade’s worth of paint splotches on it’s surface, which, to be honest, I find a little endearing but it may need a good scrub now that it's retired as my painting space.
All in all, I’d say I’ve upgraded. I now have a grown-up drafting table, begging to be seasoned with paint and it actually tilts up and down… I have my supplies sorted, no more spending the prime of my high searching random places to find the right color, now I can toke and go straight to my corner, absorbing all of the stoned imagery that pops into my mind, ready to paint it. My little atelier has some of the best light in the downstairs, stuck between two windows that open to the greenery I love so much surrounding my house. My storage is one versatile bakers shelf with just enough space to hold most of my supplies but not enough to allow me to clutter it. The deep window sills meeting to the table double as extra storage space and/or a perch for the cat to stare ominously at me. The corner behind my table is simple, some planters full of succulents, a couple of odd pieces that I have made or found at thrift stores and an old photo of my dear, passed Grandma, from when she was around my age. Something about having her photo on the pinboard above my creative space is soothing. Next to my corner, where all of my supplies finally have a decent home, is my loathsome yard sale table. Yes, I still have it. The top is gunked in thick blobs of warms and cools, there are dents in the sides from moving it over the years and a damn broken hinge that does nothing anyway. It stayed because my 10 year old son is a practicing artist as well, and I have bequeathed it to him. His supplies have their own storage on the other side of the table, stuffed into a secretary's desk with zero care- he promised me he'd finish organizing it sometime this century. This boy moved passed Crayola at 5, so his medley of paints to pencils is enviable, especially after Christmas. Now that our surplus is in a shared space, it’s going to be difficult to keep my hands away from his elite collection but I’ll try.
As I post to my blog, my objective is not only combining my love of writing and art into one compass; it is more about building a foundation, pouring the wet concrete into molds so that as time goes on, my craft can have a soul behind it, and dry into a solid, strong base to build on. Sharing a venue so crucial to my existence feels like an appropriate addition to this thread I have going. My Pinterest feed is dominated by photos of inspiration for studios. They are something I can never get tired of exploring, and though almost all are outrageous, pulled from an Urban Outfitter’s spread, I still imagine the key to their lock: the artist, creating in a place full of paint mess, strewn canvases and pinboards of galvanizing visuals. Even though this corner in my den is not an exposed-brick urban creative utopia, it is suitable for exactly what I need. Beyond that, my son gets to sit next to me like my little painting Padawan, which is the cherry on top of a studio to call my own. Being able to look over and see him ruminating with intensity at his work, is just about everything I need in life. Plus, nothing better to build character than making him use that disgrace of a table, after all, some of the best artists come from humble beginnings.