Cleaning Up and Organizing
I've been chipping away at my stuff in the basement. I was inspired when I couldn't find a single thing I was looking for and was clumsily looking through stacks of stuff and precariously balancing things on top of other things in my search. It was very awkward and frustrating so I took a deep breath and started in on my art area as a whole.
I had things pretty well organized when I went off to Portland, but like a garden left unattended, my neat tidy little studio went to seed.
There is literally no clean surface to aide in the sorting through of other not clean surfaces. There has been a lot of juggling, but it's not the precarious kind as I'm carefully planning each move. I'm using the stairs to help me sort through stuff. As I go through a shelf, I stack related items on a step; later when I'm organizing the clean shelf, I take each stack and put it where it should go.
There is still TONS to do, but in this first phase of the project my main goal is to get all my finished pieces in one stack of portfolios, all my extra mat board and foam core piled together, all the small, loose paper in a box together, and all my big loose paper and various notepads of vellum, watercolor paper, drawing paper, etc. in their own pile.
Phase two will involve organizing my tools into one area. Markers, rulers, compasses, pencils, pens, x-acto blades, tape, odds and ends etc. Might not sound like that big of a job, but both I and my ancestors have accumulated a lot of various tools over many years, so there's a lot to go through.
Phase three will involve creating space to actually do some work down there. Clearing off tables, cleaning out old dressers and cabinets, throwing out old stuff like lumps of dried up clay and scrap wood.
Other tasks, though I'm not sure how they fit in the "phases" and perhaps need their own phase, or even a separate project title include:
I'm going to see Twilight with 2 of my sisers-in-law tonight. No I'm not a 14 year old girl, and no I'm not really even interested in seeing it, but for some reason they are, and they invited me, so I thought it would be a good chance to hang out with the two of them, since I don't think that's ever happened before. I see them quite a bit, but always when the whole family meets, or with their husbands/my brothers.
I had things pretty well organized when I went off to Portland, but like a garden left unattended, my neat tidy little studio went to seed.
There is literally no clean surface to aide in the sorting through of other not clean surfaces. There has been a lot of juggling, but it's not the precarious kind as I'm carefully planning each move. I'm using the stairs to help me sort through stuff. As I go through a shelf, I stack related items on a step; later when I'm organizing the clean shelf, I take each stack and put it where it should go.
There is still TONS to do, but in this first phase of the project my main goal is to get all my finished pieces in one stack of portfolios, all my extra mat board and foam core piled together, all the small, loose paper in a box together, and all my big loose paper and various notepads of vellum, watercolor paper, drawing paper, etc. in their own pile.
Phase two will involve organizing my tools into one area. Markers, rulers, compasses, pencils, pens, x-acto blades, tape, odds and ends etc. Might not sound like that big of a job, but both I and my ancestors have accumulated a lot of various tools over many years, so there's a lot to go through.
Phase three will involve creating space to actually do some work down there. Clearing off tables, cleaning out old dressers and cabinets, throwing out old stuff like lumps of dried up clay and scrap wood.
Other tasks, though I'm not sure how they fit in the "phases" and perhaps need their own phase, or even a separate project title include:
- Cleaning up the wood shop once and for all. There's a lot that I can't do since a lot of that stuff is my brother John's, but I can clean up and put all the drill bits in one area and all the files in another and group all the wood together to open up the entrance to the wood shop.
- Setting up a porcelain studio. I've been itching to work with porcelain for a long time, but it would be a number of more classes at the Community College before I could work with the white clay if I want to go the formal education route. But then I realized that my mom has worked with pottery a lot in the past and wouldn't make me work with brown clay if I don't want to. And we have a wheel, and we have a kiln and all the pottery tools you can imagine. So that's something I'd like to do.
- Getting rid of my mom's old craft stuff. Don't worry, she's involved and has wanted to do this for years. She stopped doing her craft show a few years ago, and all the stuff has just sat there. She wants to organize a supply sale, so I'm going to help her do that. If after that, there's still a lot of stuff left, I might help her organize a big bonfire. :)
I'm going to see Twilight with 2 of my sisers-in-law tonight. No I'm not a 14 year old girl, and no I'm not really even interested in seeing it, but for some reason they are, and they invited me, so I thought it would be a good chance to hang out with the two of them, since I don't think that's ever happened before. I see them quite a bit, but always when the whole family meets, or with their husbands/my brothers.