New readers start here, to quote ancient magazine serials. Since I'm hoping to put this house on the market in the next couple of years, and move to a rented condo, yet to be found, but preferably ground floor overlooking anything but a parking lot, and not in an old folks place, things have to happen.
It's probably not a coincidence that my art career is moving away from painting, drawing, printmaking, largely into fiber arts. I'm at a general crossroads. Changing work projects, home, moving on to new skills, all seem to go together.
My ambition is to reduce the contents of the house gradually to just what I want to move with. Better to do it in stages than in a stressed out rush.
The studio is the hardest, so much good material, paper particularly, framed works galore. And changing media leaves a great moraine of materials from the previous medium.
So here we are:
Awaiting Handsome Son's assistance in carrying down two flights are four categories, garbage (small) thriftie (to be bigger) recycle (biggest) and donation to younger artists, which might be collapsed into thriftie if no takers.
Note: the garbage bags are just for transportation. The contents will be dumped into appropriate places, the bags home again where possible. Trying not to add plastic to the waste stream.
And just to encourage myself, here's the result of the deciding and hauling:
This worktop was a solid mass of fabric scraps, now become a single manageable crateful. And the containers cluttering the windowsill, gone, too.
This area had almost disappeared under a mountain of paper and cardboard, now reduced to items I will use. The surfaces you see were buried.
Everywhere I look people are doing this. Possibly a national self care movement, in view of the dismal political state of affairs.
Anyway, it's therapeutic, not least because it unclogs your creative flow when you can find what you need. And have room to work. It's always the work surfaces that vanish first.
And looking further ahead, it will simplify the stresses of selling and renting.
At least that's the plan. Pot of tea next, and bread baking since I am, shock, horror, Out of Bread.
