REARRANGING THE STUDIO

In your creative or professional work, do you have rhythms to the seasons, your activities, where the focus goes?

Every season, I move things around in the studio. This is a practical change, so that I can get at the wood stove, or use the space around it when it's not in use.

Like any rearrangement of furniture, it moves energy and opens things up. It's an excuse to tidy, clean and organize, and it brings in the sense of the upcoming season, from the few I've spent here so far.

In the spring, I move the tables against the central wood stove area, and gain some wall space.

In the fall, the stove is opened up, and becomes the central focus of the whole place. I have also begun a major cleanout in the fall: of the stove interior, a big sooty vacuum job, so that I can use the interior space to its fullest when it's not so nice outside.

I've noticed other rhythms of the seasons in the studio also: in the winter I tend to do a lot of reflecting, and a fair amount of work in abstraction in painting and on paper. I work on the pours, and I would say I'm at my most 'internal'. In the fall, for the last few years I've been working on abstract landscape: using the warmer months to work in oils with more airflow is the idea, and focusing on abstract landscape.

The summer and fall are more extrovert times of traveling and being with others at art book fairs and open houses. Depending on the year and the timing, there are focused periods for exhibition prep. I also work out the calendar for printing mid to end of summer.

Big conceptual ideas come in somewhat demanding, concentrated times, with long fallow periods in between. For my books, there's been a flurry of initial idea development, and then the project returns to back burner mode when I find some aspect I can't work my way around — or I do, but just really, glacially slowly.

The stuff of the studio moves around as the focus and activity changes, and I’m slowly learning that one focus at a time is the only sane way to go.