Wednesday, June 20, 2007

wishes



1. Seal Puppet from EnviroDepot 2. Watercolor on paper

Hello! What a strange day! I woke and found Greg home, which surprised me, since I hadn't heard him come in. So I began my day with every intention of tackling the mess that is my studio. I could think of nothing else for days, contemplating how I would arrange my books, considering the best places for supplies, looking through my many books on organizing. Today was it. So I answered emails. Googled words like 'fairytale', 'zit', 'egg tempera' and 'bird'. Had lunch at Mamacita's with a side trip to EnviroDepot to get some toys for Azalea. Then, I put in The Secret of Roan Inish (for Azalea) and began the hard business of organizing. I like to fantasize about sparse, minimalist rooms, everything in its proper place, every object chosen for its beauty and usefulness. I dream of this because the space I occupy is full of stuff- loads of goodies I find, from feathers, leaves, big marbles, to art I collect: dolls, glass and paintings-all carefully arranged in pile-like vignettes that the untrained eye would see as haphazard. I spend a long time fiddling with my stuff, rearranging it to look like the spreads in Martha or Domino. I stare at magazines with an unhealthy desire to spruce up my nest. It takes a lot of effort. Effort I spend contemplating rather than doing. Which is why my studio is still a wreck, but I think I have a pretty good idea of where I want to go with it. I will start tomorrow. I just wish I had more time.

While I was procrastinating, I looked at Keri Smiths blog http://www.kerismith.com/ and read about guerilla art (art made in public places completely anonymous, with the intention of promoting ideas) this struck a chord. I remembered passing a building a day or two ago with a rabbit stenciled in black and white, near the ground, so it appeared to be sitting in the grass. It surprised me, I thought at first it was real. I remember feeling uplifted and found myself wondering who had taken the time and why. I began looking for more rabbits and found two more. How exciting! What did it mean? I didn't know but I liked it. This got me thinking of all sorts of things one could do, like posters of paintings or drawings posted all over with no name or any info, made simply for the fun of it and to get people wondering. Of course this would appeal to me, its another project NOT cleaning my studio. I wish that I would wake up tomorrow and discover that my dolls had taken the initiative and not only cleaned but organized. Good night.

3 comments:

Andrew Thornton said...

I think it might possibly be genetic. I'll sit for hours before moving a single box. I have yet to unload and unpack my studio space. I lost my pilers, which meant that I had to dig through a thousand different boxes and under clothes and bedding and books to find them. I kept thinking to myself, "When I find them, I'll be so happy and everything will be okay." As you can probably imagine, I couldn't find them right off the back.

If I wake up early enough, I'm going to go to the container store and buy a bunch of things to pack stuff away. Mainly clothes. I have so many clothes.

And do you really think we could go minimalist? We, our mother's children?

Cindy said...

I'm still trying to figure out how to do all the things I want to do, and still be able to clean up and get organized! Let me know if you figure out how to do it.

You reminded me of something that I had wanted to do once...inspired by a book about fairy houses, I wanted to make little fairy houses in places where people would find them and wonder how they got there, and maybe would be inspired to do the same..there's some photos and ideas here..http://www.fairyhouses.com/pictures_new.html

Just one more reason to not clean up...but so much fun!

Steph said...

I love the guerrilla art idea - what would I do, though? Hang little beaded windchimey things around, I suppose.