The dreaming, praying, and CREATING of a home art studio - Part 2

In part one of what is becoming a bit of a miniseries of blog postings about the making of my home art studio, I talked a little bit about the importance of having a home art studio to begin with as well as sharing a "teaser" snapshot of how a part of it looks so far. While I still have a ways to go with getting the whole art studio to a point where it is totally organized and workable - the storage/supply closet is maybe 50% of the way acceptable - I can at least share with you some quick snapshots of what I have been able to do so far.

Here are some stills of the overall layout and look of things. These pictures will give you a pretty solid 360 degree view of everything...

This is the view from the living/family room archway. Having the table set up perpendicular from the window-side wall is nice because it gives some nice space to walk around the room and also to sit at the table and see the TV.

This is the view a mostly empty corner right by the window wall. That door goes to the weird DIY addition/room (from the previous owners) that started as my personal matchbox-sized art studio and will now be the supply room.

This is my daughter's wall with her set-up and her old toy bin organizer. We have purged the most of what will be purged and most of everything that is left we would love to also get rid of but she is weirdly attached to it all. 

This is the view from the kitchen doorway (without a door). 

This the view/perspective if I/you were standing at my easel and/or exiting the supply room. That bookshelf is something my husband's grandfather made but it is barely useful because of how strangely small it is. That is my huge german shepherd who provides both companionship for us and home security for us. Don't try and break into my house and use my home studio, alright? Don't try stealing my weird and unmatched and hand-me-down furniture. *wink*

About the furniture:

• Almost all of it is was given to us for free at some point either before my husband and I were married and just starting out. 
• The stuff that wasn't given to us for free was either gifted (the standing easel) or I got it for super cheap when I once worked for that famous Swedish furniture company that everyone knows and (mostly) loves. (Yes. That one. I worked there doing quality assurance and then sales and light management during the end of my college years and early years of my career years.) 
• For our purposes in the art studio, it is still being determined if we will keep what we have always had or pass it on so that we can make purchases of furniture that specifically adhere to our studio needs. However, once I finally clean and organize the supply room (a strange DIY addition to the house from the previous owners) it might just happen that everything is stored in there! We'll see. 

About the space:

• Technically, this room is supposed to be the (formal) dining room. We tried to use it as it was intended when we first moved in but it just didn't work out. *shrug* What can I say? I am not a traditional wife/mother/woman. 
• I pretty much hate the walls/wallpaper. My husband is actually a fan of it though. (We classically disagree on everything home decor. I like modern, graphic patterns, and bright colors and he likes old school, classic, and heirloom.) Thankfully, my husband has finally agreed that the wallpaper can and SHOULD go. That will happen... whenever it does. 
• The light fixture is ugly and does a poor job at providing lights that are adequate for things like painting/coloring/photo editing so that you can actually see the correct hue of colors. Basically, the lighting is a nightmare for visual art & design and creation of it. It should go. That doesn't mean it will.  
• At some point during this room's dining room days, it was decided that it should be my daughter's playroom (during her toddlerhood) because of its close proximity to the common area/family & living room. As time has passed, it has been determined that my daughter needed a more closed/separate/private space in conjunction with the fact that she had way too many playthings/toys that she didn't really play with and definitely could not keep organized or cleaned up because she just plain didn't care about them, my husband and I thought very critically and identified the things that were most essential and (most important) beloved by my daughter - creating art is at the top of the list(!!!) - and we worked hard to purge like crazy in order to finally get what you see above. 
• Most of my daughter's playthings/toys and kid-sized furniture (like a dress-up spinning closet and  table with benches) now take up residence in her room. Between her room and the art studio, she has two places in the house to do activities but the art studio is strictly for making and creating things. She is not allowed to have markers, scissors, or the like in her room and my husband and I strictly enforce this as well and my daughter has done a great job obeying the new house rules. 

In the next installments of this little miniseries, I will show you some close-ups of some of the little areas of the studio space as well as show you around the supply room when it is (finally) cleaned and mostly organized. I will also let you know the things I bought in the way of art supplies and show you what I have had in my "hoard."

How I spent my weekend

Spent the better part of my weekend looking like this... 

Because I was spending time here watching life through the lens doing things like this...

For my last wedding of this calendar year, I am mostly OK with how everything went. The lot of the previous statement is something I will be discussing soon enough after some serious prayer and meditation.

I'll just say this much: I am feeling a bit like I am in the midst of a career crisis.

A whole gaggle of things are weighing on me lately that I have always had to deal with but are finally becoming so heavy that I am realizing that I am very much going to have to make some drastic changes.

*sigh*

I am seriously and truly resting in the shelter and wisdom of Philippans 4:13 today.

The dreaming, praying, and CREATING of a home art studio - Part One

Here's a question for all of you artists out there (musical, visual, performance, etc.)...

Do you have (and use, for that matter) a HOME studio? 

[By home studio I mean, a studio that you literally have at your home.]

Up until this past weekend, I did not actually have a home art studio even though I told people that I did. Really? The home studio that I have told people I have has been more like a large art and design supply and storage room that is so disordered and unorganized it really is more like a dumping ground for all manner of creative endeavors in various states of existence including not even started, partway through, and carelessly (and hopelessly) abandoned. It is an understatement to say that my home art studio is pretty much a sad and almost literal reflection of what my visual creative endeavors are at home.

Last year I realized something: If I am going to call myself a working visual artist, then I actually have to WORK at it. (It being a visual art.) Also, working at it doesn't equate to me "do"-ing art only at work and with my art students. Technically that kind of working at art is literally that - working and getting paid for it - really, though, that's more teaching and instructing.

Not being a true working artist has stolen by "mojo" (for lack of a better word). In the few moments that I have attempted to steal for myself to create anything, I have found that it is virtually impossible for me to do anything other than make things over and Over and OVER again. (See my discussion of Creating vs. Making here) Case in point? Two evenings ago I went to a paint-your-own-pottery studio and I could not figure out what to paint on the berry colander bowl I selected to paint for myself. Then when I finally decided on doing "berries" (how original, right?) I had to look up pictures of them via Google images on my phone in order to know what to do. Basically, I put someone else's versions of berries on my colander bowl instead of just creating my own.

Now, while this might seem a silly and maybe even stupid thing to fuss about, understand that for me (a person who is pretty able to render or make a version of anything you give me) to not be able to do anything original? Well... I feel like me just re-making things all the time rather than coming up with anything original makes me a huge faker versus someone who is actually creative. 

Well you know what? Gone are the days of me having the excuse that I can't be a working artist because I don't have a proper home studio. While I can't give you the full tour of my new and improved home art studio (yet), here is a sneak peek of a part of it...

In coming blog postings, I will be sharing a full tour in addition to the supplies that I have on-hand, the old studio that is now officially the studio supply room, and some of the projects that I have been doing alongside my 4yo daughter (who loves to draw and paint) and my social studies teaching husband (who  sometimes likes to draw but loves to sculpt with clay way more).

Look at what Art Mash blog is doing!!! [Cardboard Sculpture]

 Art Mash: Cardboard Sculpture: They took a long time but finally we're done!  Tiffany and Chris worked on the first one - a camera and they managed to have it so that the ...

Screenshot of Ms Swanson's Art Mash blog from  Richmond, British Columbia

I had no clue that I could do this but I just found the above on my blogroll and I was BLOWN AWAY by it and when I tried to visit the blog blog to comment on the teacher's posting I couldn't but I DID find this awesome blog sharing button at the base of the posting that allowed me to easily create a posting here on my blog!! Nifty, eh? Art Education networking is such a beautiful thing.

Way to go Art Mash blog!!! I am so impressed with your cardboard sculpting ability. ;)

The crucible of painting for The Crucible

Yesterday was my first day back to school after two days of cancellations for Hurricane Sandy and I ended up having to ditch out on almost all of my classes because of set painting for The Crucible.

(-__-)

Well... I didn't really ditch out on all of them, some of them I were drafted to join me in the endless pursuit of dry brushing every surface to make it look like distressed wood grain. Also, my department head covered some of my classes (like study hall) and I took some of her students in addition to some of the ones I had and drafted them into painting as well.

TOGETHER, WE CAN MAKE IT HAPPEN!!!

The official shirts for this production are so choice. Praise the Lord for a marketing and design team that shares the same vision as I do by doing things stylistically in a minimalist fashion and VERY WELL at that. 

As it turns out, we have sort have been doing what we've been doing wrong and after much contemplation, I am going to try and turn this set building ship on a dime and lighten up the wall panels so they look more like the three separate vertical planes (on each side) that we wanted them to be to begin with. It just makes more sense that way!

I was sitting back in the sound booth and it just occurred to me that it should be done but rather than being the killjoy and telling the students, "OK... we are going to have to do at least two more... MAYBE three... more rounds of dry brushing to light the value on some specific sections."

Before I made them all do it, I took a picture with my phone and then burned and dodged it in photoshop to have an actual example of what we were going to be doing when we changed it all up. I say: Work SMARTER not HARDER!! 

This might be the most frustrating and rewarding set design and painting I've done so far. It was conceptualized to be as original as possible - though the two faculty directors/producers did cull and give me inspiration images to (literally) draw the set designs from. The craziness that was Hurricane Sandy has definitely set us all back a little but Lord-willing we will make this all happen and it WILL be AWESOME.