STUDIO OBJECTS : WOOD STOVE

The studio stove is a long-held dream of mine that became real in October 2021. Unlike any other kind of heating system, the stove feels like an alive thing: it needs feeding and care, it outputs a fair amount of filth, and it most certainly keeps me company in the long winter hours.
Every morning of the colder season, I go out to the garage like a farmer might, to fire up the stove at least an hour before I plan to be in there. I kneel, often immediately sooting up the knees of my pants, and open the stone-cold door. I move around bits of coal leftover from yesterday's logs and strike a match to some fatwood. Once logs are arranged and the fire appears to be growing (the logs have caught), I close the door with an open flu and then go back to the house to finish getting ready for the day.
I return to the house to finish up the morning and have breakfast, and glance several times up at the long silver stovepipe to see what kind of smoke is coming out. At first, what comes out is smoky, but when it's turned clear and warpy, I know I've got a warming studio and a viable workspace for the day.
Lighting the wood stove feels like a very salient metaphor for keeping the creative flame alive in the cold, dark winter months with its shortening and then imperceptibly lengthening days. Some days, just like with the creative thread, it's hard to get the stove to stay lit. When it cooks along, it's an incentive for me to keep returning and make the most use of the space that day.
Sometimes it accompanies me long into the night, and once, the embers were still warm when I came back to it in the morning. Usually, by about 3 to 4 pm, it gets too hot, and then I’m shedding layers and finding excuses to go stand out in the icy woodshop.