Lisa Call

The Past

I used to put in 20 hours a week in my studio. Always. Every single week I’d prioritize the creation of art and I would make sure I found the time to make art.

Then I decided I needed to change my life. I wasn’t happy, things weren’t working. I was letting things into my life that I didn’t absolutely love. I wasn’t making choices, I was just letting life happen.

So I took some time to discover what I really wanted. The first step in this process was to eliminate things from my life that weren’t working. The boyfriend, the clutter in the house and eventually the house.

This lead to the remodel project, which I’ve been writing about weekly since last August. Wow. I contacted the contractor in July – we started the design in August. That is 10 months of construction on my brain.

The house has been 99% done since the end of March but I needed April and May to settle in, get the punch list finished and write about the process.

The Present

So now – here I am – where am I? I certainly have changed my life. I love living in Denver vs. the suburbs. I love living my life with intention. I love my new home and new studio.

The turmoil is over and when I look back it’s been 2 1/2 years since I’ve been at this place (the year prior to my move my father was ill and passed away, as did 3 other close family members) with no big things to distract me.

This is a very exciting and scary place to be. I know myself. I know this is the time when historically I am very likely to create yet another diversion to keep me from having to answer that scary question:

"What Do I Want?"

It’s good to know this – to have the awareness. Because this time, I’m not going to do it. No boyfriends, no more moving, no more building. This is it. Just me and my dreams. Time to create them.

The Plan

I’ve been working on answering that question last 4 months. Thinking about what I love doing. Writing, reading, thinking big.

I’ve made tons of notes on scraps of paper it’s been fun to hint around at the answer to the question. Wonderful fun ideas coming up daily.

This dreaming part, which is wonderful and fun and vitally important, is now ready to take a more definite shape. I have a good idea of what I want, now time to make it concrete.

I’m ready to move from dream to plan so for that to happen I am putting the following task on my todo list daily:

- Planning – 30 minutes or more

I’m taking all those wonderful ideas and pulling them together into a cohesive plan that I can take action on. Priorities and systems and schedules.

And all of this is very fun, but it’s also pretty scary. Cause it’s a lot of work. Because all the big dreams that my right brain came up with, my left brain is saying "You are going to do WHAT? Do you know how much work that is? Do you even know how to do that? "

So I think those thoughts and still I move ahead, cause in addition to distractions I’m not letting fear stop me either. I just think about the next 30 minute planning session and I am making steady progress forward – turning the dream into reality.

And, because first and foremost I’m an artist and love creating art, the other thing on my daily todo list is:

- Create Art – 1 hour or more

I am committing to returning to 15 hours (or more) of studio time every week. I debated going back to 20 but decided I’m doing more art business work so I’ll stick with 15 for now.

I’ll let you all know how things progress.

Studio Posts

I’m not quite done with my posts on building a studio. Next up will be a post on my studio storage.

Tomorrow I plan to catch up on all the blog comments I’ve failed to respond to the last few weeks and see if there are other studio topics I need to cover based on the questions.

Once that is done I’ll need to think up another theme for my blog posts for June. Hm. Somewhere I had a list…

The Series

The other posts in the Studio Lighting series:

Studio Lighting – Part I – Requirements & Why I went with Fluorescent
Studio Lighting – Part II – Indirect fluorescents in the Studio
Studio Lighting – Part III – Solux Track Lighting

Today’s post is a discussion of other lighting needs in the studio.

The Remaining Requirements

In the inital post I listed the requirements I identified for my studio lighting as follows:

1) Provide enough light at all times (day and night) to be able to do color work through out the studio
2) Be as energy efficient as possible
3) Provide enough task lighting at my sewing machine and cutting tables to do that work
4) Provide gallery style lighting for open studio events
5) Provide lighting similar to regular home lighting to see how my art will look in those conditions

I’ve covered #1,2 and 4 in the first three parts of this series. Leaving a discussion of task lighting and regular home lighting for this post.

Task Lighting

First step was to identify the tasks that I do in my studio and then determine if I would need more lighting for that job.

This is my list (based on what I needed in my last studio):

1) Working at my sewing machine
2) Working at my cutting table
3) Painting canvases (to mount my textile paintings) and doing design work at a worktable

My hope was that the indirect fluorescents would provide enough light for all of these tasks. In my previous studio that was definitely not the case and I used swing arm lamps to add more light.

Now that the studio is up and running it looks like I was right and that no additional lighting for specific tasks will be needed. Currently the lightbulb is burned out on one of my sewing machines and I’m using a swing arm, but I think once it is replaced it will be fine. So the jury is still out on this.

I definitely have enough light at my cutting table as one of the fluorescent light banks runs right over the top of the table (by design). Even at night with no outside light coming in through the window it’s great.

I haven’t set up a table for painting the canvases but have done some design work at other tables and it is again excellent. Have good quality light throughout the studio from the indirect fluorescents is such a treat. I’m still amazed every time I turn them on and realize I don’t need any other lights.

Home Lighting Conditions

My final requirement was to replicate normal home lighting conditions to see what my artwork will look like in most homes. This is where I didn’t do a very good job.

At some point in the lighting process I told the builders I would be putting some can lights in the studio for this reason. And then somewhere along the way I dropped this idea. I can’t really remember exactly when I dropped this but I know it had to do with cost and the thought that it was total overkill (forgetting the need to replicate normal lighting conditions in that thought).

I should have trusted my original plans on the can lights and not second guessed myself just because the builders looked at me funny when I would tell them I was going to put 3 different types of lights in the studio. I’ve forgiven myself and moved on but good lesson learned – I really do know what I want and why!

Retrofitting can lights in the my vaulted ceiling isn’t an option as there is essentially no attic so this is what it is. I will have to carry my artwork to other parts of my house. Not a huge deal, and if I had to pick something to not be perfect this would be the thing to turn out this way.

When I build my next studio I’ll put in the can lights (I’ve already told my builder that after I make my first million from my art I’ll have him build and ever more grand and gorgeous studio for me).

The Series

The other posts in the Studio Lighting series:

Studio Lighting – Part I – Requirements & Why I went with Fluorescent
Studio Lighting – Part II – Indirect fluorescents in the Studio
Studio Lighting – Part IV – coming soon

Today’s post is a discussion of the track lighting I installed in addition to the indirect fluorescent fixtures.

Why Tracks

One of my requirements for lighting my studio was to have gallery style lighting for open studio type events and for seeing how my art will look in this circumstances. The indirect fluorescents were far from what I needed for this.

So I also put in 2 set of track lights over 2 of my design walls. I was going to do 3 but the fluorescents wouldn’t fit with them. So only 2 of 3 long walls has track lighting.

Why Solux

I did a lot of investigating of track lights and it quickly became clear that the Solux lights were by far the best choice. The blurb from their website:

SoLux is a patented light source that provides an unparalleled replication of natural daylight. No other light source in the world matches daylight more closely than SoLux. SoLux is used in many of the world’s top museums including the Van Gogh Museum. SoLux is also an environmentally friendly light source. SoLux is more energy efficient than incandescent sources and does not contain mercury found in fluorescent lights sources.

These bulbs have a CRI (color rendering index) of about 98.3. This is about as close to real daylight (CRI of 100) as one can get in a light bulb. They come in several different color temperatures and a light spreads (the angle of the light from the bulb – from spots to wide angle).

My Choices

I hunted all over the web for a reference on how far from the wall and at what angle for track lights should be installed and found pretty much no useful information. So again I just took an educated guess on what to buy.

Because I was putting 5500K fluorescent lights I decided to go with warmer lights for the tracks. The bulbs I bought are the 4100K lights and I bought the 24 degree narrow flood lights. With my 10 foot high ceilings I made an educated guess this would work to wash the wall in light.

I also had to make a guess on how many heads/bulbs I would need. I put in 1 eight foot track and 1 sixteen foot track. I decided on 11 heads total with them spaced about 3 feet apart.

I put each of the tracks on a different switch so I could turn them on and off separately.

How it’s Working

As you can see from the photo above the tracks are probably a bit too close to the wall and the bulbs might work better if they were the wide angle floods instead of the narrow.

When these bulbs burn out I’ll replace them with the widest angle floods they sell so I have less spot lighting. I’m also going to change the angle of the heads so they hit a bit higher up on the wall and I think that will help for now.

Still they look really great and I love them. They are also excellent for doing color work even thought they are only 4100K because of the high CRI.

One way I’ve found that works great for working in the studio is to turn the fluorescents on over my work areas and the tracks on over the design wall. Makes for a nice combination of lights.

I have to say the light from these bulbs is the most amazing and beautiful light I have ever seen from a light bulb. My indirect fluorescents are awesome but these solux bulbs are incredible. Beautiful beautiful light.

The Cost

I ended up ordering the entire system from Solux because their tracks were cheaper than the lighting store I was working with (even with the contractor discount). The total cost for 24 feet of track plus heads/bulbs and all the connectors was $670.

So total cost for my studio lights was about $5000 – again – my art is absolutely work that investment.

My final post about studio lighting, coming soon – hopefully tomorrow, will be about task lighting and my requirement to see my work under normal home lighting conditions.

The Series

The other posts in the Studio Lighting series:

Studio Lighting – Part I – Requirements & Why I went with Fluorescent
Studio Lighting – Part III – coming soon
Studio Lighting – Part IV – coming soon

Today’s post is a discussion of the installation of the indirect fluorescent lights I selected for whole studio lighting and how they are performing.

The Fixtures

The fixtures I ordered (link to lights on the manufacturer’s website) had to be manufactured and it was an exciting day when the finally arrived at the studio. There are seven 8 foot long fixtures and one 4 foot long fixture (which was not installed) in this pile:

This is what the fixtures looked like before they were installed (the gold stuff is just plastic protecting the very shiny silver surface that helps reflect the light):

Installation

For those that followed my blog and construction photo journal know that the installation of these lights was not a smooth process.

They had to be sent back to the manufacturer after the first failed installation attempt to be rewired. Then I had to remove one of the lights cause it turned out they didn’t fit (due to end caps that they sort of forgot to tell me out). There were some cancellations by the electricians, a sketchy incident with them being locked out of the house but after 6 or 7 scheduled appointments they were finally installed.

During that time the lights sat piled up in my studio collecting dust:

Finally the electrician and Carl (the guy in charge of my project) got the lights installed. The lights are bolted together into long runs and then suspended from the ceiling on wires. It was a bit of a tricky job but they did an excellent job of hanging them straight:

Installed

This is what they look like installed – the light is bounced off the ceiling and throughout the entire room. I have them just a foot off the ceiling because I don’t want them to block the design walls so quite a bit of light pools on the ceiling. They would probably look a bit better hanging at 18″ down but for my application this is how I want them.

There are 3 runs of lights running the length of the studio, which is 27 feet long and 20 feet wide. Two of the runs are 16 feet long and the third is 24 ft long. The shorter runs are because I don’t need to light up the stairway area (floor plan).

Because energy efficiency was a concern I have the lights on 4 switches. The shorter runs each have their own switch and the longer run is broken into 2 switches. This way I can turn on only a few lights if I’m doing work in just one area of my studio.

How They Perform

I didn’t get to see these things in person so I had to guess how many runs of lights I would need. I went with 3 and it seems to be about perfect – one down the center and 2 closer to the walls. The runs are about 7 feet apart.

Each 4 foot section of light holds 3 T5 bulbs so with seven 8 foot fixtures that is 42 bulbs.

This seems to be about perfect. I have even light throughout the studio without any areas that feel to dark or too light.

The color of the light (5500K with a CRI of 91 – see part I for more info on the bulbs) is perfect for my needs. I can do color work day and night without a problem and it’s a really good light for photographing my artwork.

Basically these lights turned out to be exactly what I wanted. There was a lot of guess work involved but in the end it worked out well. If I built another studio I would install the same lights in pretty much the same configuration.

The Cost

Several people have asked so figured I might as well just include this in the post. These lights aren’t cheap. I got the contractor’s discount on these fixtures and they were still $450 a piece, with tax it came to about $3500 for the fixtures. The bulbs were another $600 (I order 2 cases of 25 at $11.50 per bulb, plus shipping).

My artwork and I are so totally worth this investment.

Requirements

When I first started designing my studio I knew good lighting was one of the most important features of the room. So I started by identifying my goals for my lighting solution:

1) Provide enough light at all times (day and night) to be able to do color work through out the studio – preferably without any harsh glare
2) Be as energy efficient as possible
3) Provide enough task lighting at my sewing machine and cutting tables to do that work
4) Provide gallery style lighting for open studio events
5) Provide lighting similar to regular home lighting to see how my art will look in those conditions

Research

I considered hiring a lighting designer to help me but I didn’t plan far enough in advance.

So it was me and the internet in search of lighting solutions when we came down to the deadline (electricians on ladders asking where they should run wire).

Between websites, blogs and questions posted to large fiber artist mailing lists I was able to make a darn good guess at what I wanted. [thanks to everyone that generously shared their information - I am very grateful].

The first 2 posts will cover #1 and #2 (whole studio lighting) – the most important requirements. I’ll finish off talking about requirements #3-5. I suspect this is going to take at least 3 if not 4 posts due to my time and the amount of information I have to share.

What Didn’t Work

I would have preferred some type of LED lighting solution for the full studio lighting because of requirement #2 but I couldn’t find anything that was suitable. There are some nice LED can lights that I learned about too late. I’m not sure they would have done the trick but they might have. I’d like to put these in my kitchen when I get the money (they are about $100 each and can be fit into regular can fixtures).

I would have also loved to go with some type of daylighting solution and put in a ton of solatubes for natural light during the day, but I would have needed a ton and at $650 each that was not in the budget. Especially since they only work during the day so it would have been an incomplete solution.

Incandescent lighting wasn’t going to fulfill the energy efficient requirement for the full studio lighting so I didn’t consider it.

What Did Work

So that left me with fluorescent.

I did a lot of reading and asking about types of fluorescent bulbs and fixtures googling numerous and various key words about lighting and studio and who knows what. I love google and the internet – there is nothing one can’t learn it seems.

Fixtures
To keep the glare down and provide a more even and softer light I went with indirect fixtures that bounce the light up and off the ceiling with only a very small percent of the light coming straight down into the room.

I’ll talk about the fixtures more in the next post when I post photos of them.

Bulb Type
Next up was a decision on type of bulb. The old big bulbs are T12. There are also T8s (smaller diameter) and T5s (the smallest) that are both more energy efficient. T12 were definitely out because they are significantly less efficient.

Not many people I talked to, including the folks at the lighting store, knew much T5 and T8 bulbs. The best information I could find was this article: T5 Fluorescent Systems. Somewhat technical but not too much so.

From this I decided to go with T5 bulbs. The 2 key deciding factors:

T5s are smaller and so they use less materials = more green. [Reference]

T5s are supposed to maintain their light output over their lifetime better than T8s and T12s. [Reference]. That means consistent light in my studio for the entire 20,000 hour lifetime of the bulbs.

The need for higher heat was a concern but I think that neither T8s or T5 were going to be at their optimal temperature for the indirect fixtures I wanted (T8s too hot and T5 too cold) and somewhere in the middle they meet and figured they were both close to optimal but not quite there – so that was a wash.

I knew the T5s would be more expensive being newer but they were also likely to provide more light as I could put 3 of them in a 4 foot length of fixture vs just 2 of the T8s. So again a plus for the T5s.

It was a bit of a gamble as I couldn’t find any place to see these in person (the lighting store only had T12 indirects installed). Just had to cross my fingers and hope for the best.

The Bulbs – Color Temperature and CRI
The lighting store didn’t have high quality T5 bulbs so again I turned to the internet to find what I wanted. I was after something very close to daylight and with a very high CRI (color rendering index).

And exhaustive (or maybe just exhausting) search came up with these as my best option: T5 5500K 91 CRI bulbs. Very close to daylight with a high CRI.

 
So that’s the technical stuff and the decisions I made on what to order. Tomorrow I’ll show what it looks like with photos and talk about how well it’s working.

Studio Floor Plan

Photos of the Studio – Almost Finished

I included the floor plan again and marked some key landmarks to identify where these photos were taken.

This is facing the north wall. I still need to build the design walls for this wall. The green thing in the foreground is 4′x8′ table that I will use for cutting fabric.

My current work in progress tends to end up with parts piled up on top of my cutting table and now with a larger table I have even more room to spread it out (I tend to work on more than 1 quilt at a time so this will be very nice).

This is the east wall, and longest, wall of the studio. There is a 11′ long design wall in between the windows where I anticipate composing my smaller textile paintings.

The cutting table is visible again (and in almost every photo). It’s built on top of 4 sets of shelves. The one showing in this view holds some of my artbooks and magazines.

The south wall (yay – a southern window – I didn’t have any in my old house and this is the only one in this house as you can see the cats are equally thrilled with the southern exposure).

The bins to the right of the cutting table are from the container store and hold my hand-dyed fabric and artworks in progress.

The set of drawers under the cutting table is full of my old commercial cotton fabrics that I don’t use but am not sure what to do with as of yet. Might sell them all as I’ve got 3 of these dressers full of fabric I don’t use anymore.

The west wall. I’ll use this wall as my main design wall for my larger work and as my photography wall. I photographed some artwork on it this morning and it turned out great. I couldn’t photograph in my old studio because it was too dark so this is a treat.

This is taken standing in the north-western corner and shows pretty much the entire studio from this angle.

The sewing table to the far left is the table I’ll use for constructing my compositions for the textile paintings. I have separate work areas for this type of design work and the more meditative process of quilting the quilts.

I’ve always wanted this but have never been able to pull it off. Now I can have work in progress at different stages and suspect it will increase my productivity even more. Less down time when switching between the type of work I’m doing.

This taken standing in the south-eastern corner and shows the studio from this angle.

Three of the drawers under the cutting table can be seen. The one facing me is full of beads and buttons (also rarely used). The other 2 shelves hold tools and supplies that I tend to need frequently when creating my textile paintings.

One of my requirements was a large open floor space as this is where I baste my quilts. I moved my cat over here to show scale. She was happy to help.

This is the table that they built into the space at the top of the stairs that cantilevers over the backyard area.

It’s 4 feet by 7+ feet and is the table I will use to quilt my quilts. The dressers to the right contains more thread (2 of the drawers) and tools needed while sewing. The other dressers contain yarns and more fabrics I don’t use.

This is the door to the studio closet that happily appeared in the plans I talked about in yesterday’s post.

The closet is over the top of the laundry room so the floor is about 3 feet higher than the floor of the studio. For a long time the door to the studio was in the stairway but it looked funny as it was high up on the wall, so it got moved around the corner.

I have to walk on this table (built for walking on) to get into the closet. Works great to pile everything up on the table then move it into or out of the closet.

The stairway to the rest of the house. Very open and well integrated.

The view from the kitchen/living room. Everything past the yellow wall (the old back wall of the house) was added on during the remodel. Underneath my studio is my new office and new bedroom. The laundry is to the right of the studio at the same level as the kitchen.

The Art

Lots of art here in the kitchen – the pears were painted by an artist in New Zealand and I bought it at an art coop somewhere on the north island in 2001. The small landscape on the right side of the stairway is by Tracy Helgeson (love love her work).

The ceramic plate on the wall on the left is some famous something but I got it at a garage sale for $3. The dandelion painting below it is by Shan Byran Hanson a super talented Wisconsin painter.

The ceramic plate on the counter (which you can barely see) is by Cynthia Guajardo and is surrounded by small bowls by a colleague of Cynthia’s at the Colorado Potter’s Guild.

The textile painting in the stairway on the left is Structures #60 and the one on the right at the top of the stairs is Structures #12. When the art buying money tanks are refilled I plan on buying a painting to go on the wall over the stairs into the office. It might take a few years but I have a pretty good idea of what I want to go there.

Next Up

Yay!!

That’s the what comes to mind. I absolutely love my new studio and the rest of the house that comes with it.

Tomorrow I’ll start writing about lighting. (If you look at these photos again you will see the indirect fluorescent lighting I’ve put in along with some track lighting.)

Original Studio Floor Plan

Reality Doesn’t Match Plans

Above are the correct original floor plans – there was a small bump-out to the right of the top of the stairs to the studio that was missing from my last post about the floor plan last week. This area was designed to be about 9 feet long. My original plan was to put a table in that space as shown by the big green rectangle.

Not long after they poured the foundation walls for my house it became obvious to me that what was being built didn’t match the floor plan. Two significant things happened that were going to mess up my plans for how I was going to use the space in my studio (most notably putting the table right at the top of the stairs).

The first change was they didn’t dig the bedroom/office area as deep as planned (they could only dig as deep as the old crawl space). This meant that instead of a split level out the back of my house where I would have an equal number of stairs going down and up it would be uneven.

There are only 5 steps going down into the bedroom but 10 going up to the studio. So that meant less space at the top of the stairs in the studio. So that table would have blocked the stairs.

They also built the garage longer than planned by a few feet (being guys they do things like this – add any additional space to the garage assuming everyone wants a big garage). The result of this was the 9 foot southern wall I thought I had – it suddenly became closer to 7 feet – no way my 8 foot long table would fit.

The solution

As they were building I kept thinking "that wall does not look 9′ long" so finally measured it one day. The placement of the 4′x8′ table at the top of the stairs was key for fitting in 2 sewing tables and still having enough floor space to not feel cramped.

So it was time for a chat with the builders, who were really great to work with so I knew we’d come up with a solution.

They said they thought I’d be happy to have more garage space. They are guys. Please – who cares about the garage?

After some pondering (repouring the foundation was not an option) the solution we came up with was to cantilever the studio further out to make the little bump-out 4 feet deep and they would build me a table that fit snuggly into that area.

So table at top of stairs and everything is good again.

The cantilever from outside:

Extra Bonus

As a result of this change two really cool things happened. First was the closet that was supposed to be in the laundry room got pushed into the garage because the door had to move over because of the cantelier. The only place to put that closet was into the garage (still accessible from the house but taking up floor space from the garage).

Result – my laundry room was much bigger (and ironically the garage was smaller, which definitely saddened the builders). I will easily be able to set up a table in the laundry room to dye fabric. An unexpected and very awesome benefit. I was thinking I would have to dye fabric outside or in the garage.

But what’s even better is that as I watched them build I keep noticing the space to the right of the stairs and over the laundry room. What was going to happen to that? Originally that space would have been part of the attic but with the cantilever it was suddenly a 4 foot wide space that looked exactly like a closet to me.

A closet in my studio. Something I had tried to design in and finally gave up opting to have them build a basement under the laundry room to store my art stuff. Wow – I was thrilled – a huge closet for my art (and with bonus access to the attic over the old house for more storage).

So this is what actually got built:

Thank you to the Universe

This is how the entire remodel project went – something would seem like a problem but the result would invariably be better than the original plan. In hind sight it would have been a mistake to build the studio without a closet in the studio so I suspect the universe was just looking out for me on this one.

Tomorrow I’ll post real pictures of all of this to compare to the floor plan. Then I promise – I’ll get to the lighting, cause my lighting, it’s awesome!

Markings #12
Textile Painting
©2006
44" x 32"
$7500

Art on the Walls

This morning I finished installing all the art on my walls in my house. Markings #12 was the last piece to go up and it will be the only textile paining hung permanently in the studio.

Although permanent isn’t really the right word. This piece was on hold for a buyer for a long time and that sale fell through. I suspect it won’t be too long before it finds a new owner now that it is back on the market. Hands down this is one of my favorites.

Here’s how it looks from the rest of the house:

As seen from the kitchen

Looks way better on that wall than a door doesn’t it? The builders ended up moving that door for me for free. They are the best. If you need a contractor here in Denver let me know and I’ll get you their contact info. I’m working on updating their website, then I’ll post a link to it.

Finishing the Studio

View of Markings #12 from the Studio

I love how this wall looks as seen from the rest of the studio. Definitely inspires me to want to make more art.

As you can see the studio is still a mess. So that’s the plan for today. I think I can get most of this cleaned up by lunch now that I’ve sorted through everything.

Then it’s time to put up my design walls. The styrofoam is ready and waiting:

Organizing the Studio

Tossing out More Stuff

The above photos are the current state of my studio.

When I moved everything into the house I crammed all of this and more into my studio closet:

Now it’s time to clear it out and keep only the essentials.

I cleaned out some stuff before I moved but I had a bunch of the guilty thoughts like "I really need to finish this – I started it" so I kept way too much. I also recall packing my studio was done in a rush. Much of it done the morning the movers were coming. Not the best time for clear thought.

So now I have the time and I’m sorting out 90% and more. Projects that might be nearly done but that are seriously ugly – gone. Projects that I was going to make for a friend or family member but the event passed years ago – gone. Projects I should finish because I started – gone.

Who Made Up These Rules?

Most of this stuff is 10-15 years old. I’ve kept this stuff around because it’s not bad and aren’t we required to finish everything we start? But you know what. I don’t need that rule anymore.

By getting rid of this stuff I am creating space for new things in my life. I won’t miss any of it and I’m going to love not having it draining my energy as it sits there making me feel guilty.

I have a vision in my head of a very simple and uncluttered home and studio. Where I am surrounded only by things I love and there is nothing negative making me feel bad or guilty. I’m so close to reaching that goal – the energy in my house is incredible.

The Left Side of the Brain Pays a Visit

Last night I finished organizing my office and it awesome. The whole ‘a place for everything and everything in it’s place’ thing going on. Except for a few things – like my purple ipod. I need a home for it and I suspect it will be my studio.

And the big mound of papers on my rolltop desk – those are my various todo lists in need of some organization. But other than that even the drawers are cleaned out and all the junk has been tossed – everything is organized in notebooks and file folders. Ready for action!

The Art

I added my painting by David Castle to the office last night also (above the printer in the first photo). The art over my computer is Markings #15 as I mentioned in the last post, along with my art pencil holders by Paula.

The wood and ceramic bowls in front of the window are full of rocks and shells from various vacations. I think in this case all the rocks are from New Zealand. I left clothing in NZ so I could bring back rocks. Priorities!

The art in the second photo: Over the desk is Structures #26 and on the far wall is Structures #12. The watercolors in the foreground were painted by my kids and I a few years back, when I could still interest them in doing some artwork.

My Declaration

Today I was going to start organizing my studio closet but life happened instead. So that is the plan for tomorrow. By sunday I declare my house will be completely unpacked and I will be moved in and making art. I am so so ready to make some art again.

Maybe if I get lucky we’ll have a snow day at work on friday. Everyone send your best snow wishes to Denver for a big big blizzard thursday night.