Another Autumn Another Art Studio

I have avoided this for many years mainly because I crave natural sunlight, but it was inevitable.  Eventually, I would wind up in my basement.

I have this giant extra room in the basement.  It’s where they built an addition on the house years ago.  It’s concrete and unfinished but, it’s dry and there is electricity.  Did I mention it’s free?

In order to make the space to create, I had to have a yard sale.  15 years ago I wrote “wicked huge yahd sale” on my signs to kind of poke fun at the New England accents where I live, but now it’s kind of like I’ve branded my yard sales.  I always write this and people know who’s sale it is without even looking at the address.

Long story short, This sale was a LARGE HAUL.  It took me three weeks to unload 20 years of art supplies out of my basement.  Mostly because I taught art lessons and art camps to kids for decades, so every time someone wanted to unload materials – I said yes. I had boxes and boxes of fabric, yarn, paints, paper, tools, printing press, photography prep, art books, craft materials…  You name it.  It accumulated in my basement.

And now it’s gone.  I have made the decision to end that chapter in my life.  I teach adults art now and I have them bring their own materials :)

My new art space will be devoted to painting.  I have a big project in mind.  It’s a painting series.  It’s going to take me forever and my goal for making it happen is to stay away from rabbit holes.  Rabbit holes?  What’s that you say?  It’s the multitude of paths that lie underneath the surface to get you to your destination.  Rabbits dig tons of paths.  If you are a practical human, you create one path to take you from point A to point B.  If you are a rabbit, you might have ten paths to point B and you could get distracted or lost along the way.  I’m a rabbit.  I say I want to paint, but along that path I elect to create and sell jewelry at a Christmas show, I create and sell pottery through-out the year.  I teach 1-4 art classes a week.  These are my rabbit- holes that keep me from ever accomplishing the goal I set forth.  Sure I have tons of fun along the way, but at the end of every year I also feel a great sadness for never really pushing myself to the serious goals I have made for myself.

Sigh…  here I go again.  Fall.  Back to school. Time for fall-cleaning.  Time to reassess. I’ve made some good head-way.  I’ve said no thank you to teaching kids.  I said yes to teach only one adult art class this fall and no to 4.  I emptied my home of all of the art supplies that were unnecessary.  I am journaling, meditating, and taking baby-steps to formulate the art project in my mind.  All good things…

But there are a few rabbit holes I just don’t want to give up, as time-consuming as they are.  Pottery is one of them.  I haven’t figured it out yet.  Maybe stop teaching and continue with pottery? Try to paint, teach and do pottery, which isn’t working very well from a productivity perspective?  Maybe devote 6 months to painting, then 6 months to pottery and only do one at a time?

Ugh.  If  you can’t tell, my heart is torn.  Clearly in writing the last few sentences, I can take teaching out of the mix…  but that involves a lot of people I feel terrible letting down…I will have to sit with this for a bit.

I’d love to hear from those of you with rabbit holes and what you do to clarify and simplify your life.  Or maybe you just don’t and you live a crazy hectic life.  That’s a story in itself!  But I am really craving focus. On a soul level.  And I’m finding it very difficult to find my way.

So here’s to another Fall and trying to find my place in the world.  It’s a deja vu moment…. but with the autumn there always comes hope ;)