Living in My Studio
Home is where the art is
I’m clearing, cleaning, coordinating; winnowing, wandering, and wondering amidst the cacophony of supplies, works in progress, and piles of samples in this home I call my studio. Or is it a studio that I naively call home?
The living/family room is often used temporarily for artwork coming or going and sometimes storing (attractively, as if on display).
The kitchen is for experiments, snow-dyeing prep and rinse, cyanotype prep, rinsing and toning; tea dyeing, journaling, and occasionally, painting. It is also a way station.
The dining room table, (5’ square, expanding to 7’8” purchased years ago to accommodate our growing family), is for temporary storage; large project workspace, layout, design, teaching supplies prep; packing, shipping, and the “I-don’t-know-where-to-put-this” orphans. It gets cleaned off when the whole family and “special” guests come, which only happens 4 or 5 times a year. Random visitors don’t warrant a clean-up. “I’m working here.”
Upstairs, a spare bedroom is my office and what I like to think of as my dry studio. It is where I manage my schedule, my workshops and retreats, and all communication. I write my books here, including this weekly post you are reading, make books, collage and conduct Zoom interviews or watch wonderful workshops. It is home to all my paper arts, bookmaking supplies, and paraphernalia. I have 2 printers, 1 Cricut, a large paper cutter, and many, many pens, pencils, mark-making tools, and more tools and such, lots of such. This is also where I store my completed journals.
My desk is a small 4x6’, white ceramic-tiled-top table that was at first our dining room table. The finest piece of furniture in the house is here - a 9.5’ butcher block tabletop handbuilt by my husband in 1971 to go along the wall in our apartment for use as a desk and workspace when he was in architecture school (before he transferred and studied business/real estate.) It was originally 19’ and has been shortened over the years to fit the rooms we have used it in.
The finished attic dormer is where all my finished quilts sleep on a queen-sized bed, waiting for their next adventure.
We have a large wrap-around porch that ends in a narrow screened portion. This is home to a fantastic antique workbench we rescued from a house being sold by a family in the neighborhood my husband grew up in. I had grand plans for it as an encaustic space, but before I could get to that it became the way station/storage area for all the clanky class supplies I need for teaching - buckets/pots/glass/bottles/rusty objects/chemicals and more.
Now for the actual “designated” studio space - the basement. I’m a girl who loves light and sunshine so I spent the first 5 years in this house, and all the years in other homes, ignoring the space downstairs. When it became inevitable that I needed more space to work on what was becoming a large quilt series, I asked my husband to install proper lighting for me. It was a game changer (and so totally necessary for artmaking).
We carved out a workspace for my cutting table, ironing station and sewing machine. Six 6-foot tables were set up and I finally had a real, dedicated studio. Less than a year later I came home from a week-long screen printing workshop with Pat Pauly and had him add more lights and build me a print table, expanding my 12x12’ space to 25x12’ full of fabric, dyes, paint, and most important - workspace. My space.
When I first started creating fabric collages and worked in my bedroom on my bed, my husband would call my ever-expanding fabric stash “fabric creep.” In much the same way, I have taken over this house with studio creep. We have worked from home since 1985. I have carved out studio space for almost 25 years, even when it was filled with children. The desire, the need, to create overcame the obstacles of space and situation. Home is a place to thrive.
To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition, the end to which every enterprise and labour tends. Samuel Johnson
I am a homemaker. I am a maker. I am an artist. I am happy at home. My home fulfills all my needs, and my husband’s needs, too. To be happy at home means having the space to create. To answer my question, is it a studio that I naively call home? It is a home, an inspiration-ready home where anything can happen when an idea strikes.
Creating art is a fluid process that doesn’t happen in only one room. I still don’t have the studio of my dreams. My room of my own is not as big as I would like. Yet, I have everything I need. I have come to realize that a studio is not the only place you can create. Your studio is wherever you are. The studio space(s) in my home are an extension of my creative spirit. I could be more organized. I could be neater, but my creativity demands attention, action, and acknowledgment, often at a moment’s notice. The way things are set up, I am always ready for action.
The angel doesn't sit on your shoulder unless the pencil's in your hand. Mary Oliver
Quote of the Week in honor of the passing of Faith Ringgold
Anyone can fly. All you need is somewhere to go that you can’t get to any other way. The next thing you know, you’re flying among the stars.
Faith Ringgold
Just truly loved your share of your home and all the studio areas! You are truly amazing and how great to have a husband who builds art tables, etc!! I’ve moved to a smaller place and now I feel better about using the dining area table and kitchen counters and my small new art studio area for all aspects of creating. Like the movie, Everything Everywhere All at Once!! ❤️
You can be sure that all this resonates with me. When I found a house that would work well for my elderly parents to live with me, I also found a home with a walk-out basement the size of the footprint of the house. It was a very happy day to see that everything I needed for my parents and for me was in this one house! They are gone now, but I still live here and teach and paint in the wonderful walk-out studio over the lake. I couldn't feel more blessed.