Makeover

Every once in awhile, you end up doing something you hadn't planned on at all. Not something like going to a party where you don't know anyone, or falling off your bike at a stop sign...but something that sorta comes out of the blue, dangles over your head and at the last minute, you decide to reach up and grab it. This is my studio move. I'd been at my previous studio for about three years. Back then, it was a huge decision to even get a studio and when I did... I thought I'd died and gone to heaven. Turns out, once I got a full-time teaching gig, I spent less and less time in the studio and more and more time dreaming about it again. I ended up getting a studio mate, who was one of the first artists I'd truly admired when I moved to SF, and it made the studio a bit more reasonable. But, eventually, it was clear I was never there, he was always there, and it started to seem like it was time for me to pack up my things and give up the ghost. Maybe I wasn't cut out for a studio. But I hung on in the hope.

So, this summer, when a friend called and said a single, tiny studio had become available in her building, I had a think about it, let it dangle overhead and then I leaped. It's tiny, tiny but I thought about how I work and I work tiny, tiny. Even when I had the big, huge studio, I still gathered all my things around me and worked in a one foot circled space. I would make this work. Besides being tiny, there were a few other barriers that I had to overcome to make this a workable space for my overly-aesthetic obsessiveness.
There was a white board in the room that I knew I couldn't live with and would be one of the first things that had to go.
There's a low hanging fluorescent light that I'll never use (i can't stand overhead lighting!) and a huge square fan that was going to prove to be a problem. And then, this big, blue wall. UGH! I knew this little 10x10 space was in for a huge makeover before I could even move in my huge amount of stuff!

On the bright side, the space had super tall ceilings that seemed to go on forever, nice wood floors, a big window that let natural light stream in, my own little door to close behind me and potential, lots and lots of potential. If I couldn't make a 10x10 space work, well, I would insult the very New Yorker in me!

So, I packed up my old studio, which was sad, but liberating:



and moved it all over to the new studio
and i'm finally ALL MOVED IN! just in time...