One Week to Go!

Tomorrow someone else will be moving into my now former studio. The day after that is the last open house for the gallery, the final day for gathering artists and making sales. The day after that we start packing clothes, dishes, and bringing up anything that remains, cramming them into the dining room and lower gallery level to save on the movers' hourly rate. One week from today we start moving into our new place. And after that the buyers will start moving in here.

The past few days have been full of goodbyes to people, and while it is sorta sad, it's mostly a happy time for us. There are so many things that can go wrong with this entire deal, and yet I'm not bothered by it, the conviction that we are doing the right thing is so strong.

I've been feeling quite a bit better lately, at least in terms of ability to focus. It's not adrenaline. It's more a sense of command of my situation. People who do not have physical limitations tend to think only in terms of mental or emotional limitations. Believe me, the physical ones can indeed impact mental acuity and one's state of mind. In my case, the knowledge that I am going into a situation much more suited to me physically and temperamentally has taken away that sense of always trying to catch up or stay on top of everything. I am going to be functioning at what is my actual optimum level instead of trying to call on inner resources to operate higher than that. I can do a lot of things, but it doesn't mean that I should do them. I can deal with people, artists, customers, the public at large, but it is technically difficult and exhausting for me as a deaf person, and stressful for me as someone who greatly prefers to work alone. Likewise, this big house and garden with it's stairs and hills, and the gallery with its own physical demands has become increasingly daunting for my knees and feet and hands and neck. As much as I love it, it's getting the best of me.

The age/time factor is another element: the driving distance to my parents' house isn't going to get any shorter the older any of us get. It will take a lot off my mind. Mom and Dad seem almost as excited about our move as we are. The past week was full of sunny, 60 degree days, and they went out and prepped one of the storage bins on the farm for any extra stuff I don't don't have room for in the new house, and are loaning us the pickup truck to haul my table saw and assortment of lumber and tools and such.

Yesterday I went through several boxes of old files, covering the early days after I moved here, and client files from when I first started my landscape design business. Saw all the names and the drawings and expenses. Some names made me smile with fondness. Others made me shudder or roll my eyes. Then I chucked them all. Ancient history. Reduced inventory of baggage. I've still got the original blueprints, but the rest is irrelevant.

Speaking of irrelevancy, it's time to update the very nature of this blog. For the past year, it's been a great tool for me, adding another dimension to my studio life and helping me to chart my progress, particularly the mental progress. Now, even in spite of the chaos and inaccessibility of art materials and time, the artist mindset is still very much there and very excited about the circumstantial improvements and their impact on my working life. The blog doesn't need to be quite so inward-looking or exclusively from my point of view. To this end, I am inviting other women artists to become members of this blog and to post their own issues, experiences, and thoughts. Steve has offered to handle the technical side of things, thank heavens. Who knows where this will all lead?

Amid the Detritus

It's been several gloomy days in a row, and this is yet another one--chilly, dreary, and damp. Outside the studio window the leaves are all down from the trees, even the ones in the ravine which are normally not down until December. The sculpture garden is a complete mess of brown leaves, just like this studio is a complete mess of brown and gray boxes and piles of old papers and miscellany waiting to be taken up to the trash bin.

All my art supplies are now in big labeled boxes and stacked three boxes high. The easel stands forlorn. This desk is still cluttered, with about twelve stacks of papers and notebooks and file folders, and the relationship between stacks is incoherent. About the only thing that makes sense is this computer, and perhaps also my mug of coffee. It's probably the last day I will work here at this desk, in front of this window, with this computer, and I want to savor it, gloomy day or no.

During this packing and sorting foray I've come across things which I'd brought here 15 years ago, from the last time I'd lived in Valparaiso, drawings and papers and items intended for assemblages and then forgotten as life turned out to have demands I never could have anticipated. If you have children, you will do the most direct thing for their benefit, even if it leads you well off the path you thought you were on. Of course it takes a while to correct the course.

Fortunately the conviction that I'm making changes to ease the demands on my time and body and wallet keeps my spirits up. I've only been in this studio for just over a year and sometimes I just can't believe that I'm packing everything up and making changes in my working space again. And there's the house and the garden, as well: I know every tree, every shrub, every brick, every object that I see from the window. I look down at the desk, a big door I'd stained an oak color and stenciled with a green diamond border when I first moved here. It sat atop a pair of green file cabinets and was my first dining room table. My entire family at that time sat around it for our first Thanksgiving dinner here. Except for Nick and my parents, everyone has passed away. The little boy who trimmed radishes in the kitchen that day is grown and married and has a kitchen of his own. Life is not now what it was then, and I've lived here during all those changes. I grew up here, to be honest, in the sense I'd learned to stand on my own two feet mentally, fiscally, and emotionally.

Nonetheless, the investment in this place is portable. People talk about sweat equity and attachment to a place or to the land or history, and use that as part of their strong reasons for wanting to stay put in spite of compelling reasons to pull up stakes and leave. But I've put in so much hands-on effort into every place I've ever lived, and if there is one thing I know to be true, is that the effort is part of my own inherent way of being in the world, that I couldn't not do it. So nothing, really, is wasted. It's all gone to imparting my existence upon the world, and the effort has shaped me into what I am now. It's all transient, yet it's all permanent, in the sense that I live permanently in the present, the sum total of every moment past, and thus am already contributing to the future.

So "home" is actually any place I choose it to be. Steve is the same way, and since we choose to be together, it follows that home is where each other is at and we'll imprint our presence upon the space we find ourselves in.

Of course that doesn't mean that I am not nearly overwhelmed by the demands of moving house and studio, and can't wait to get settled in!

Is it a "ta da"?

Did I do good?

The Lull Before the Storm, As it Were

It's a lovely, peaceful, sunny Sunday, probably one of the last in a while. This week I start taking down my office and studio, and packing things up steadily and methodically. One thing I've learned the hard way is that working in intense short bursts as was my wont in the past is a very bad idea. The consequences are painful and exhausting and even depressing. So getting started 3 1/2 weeks in advance is not a bit too soon.

I've basically put everything of import on the laptop, so I can call just about anywhere my "office" now. I'll leave the easel and paints and brushes set up, they don't take over the space too badly, but the assemblage materials and gallery supplies are going to have to go. That's fine with me. Nick & Amy have loaned me their cache of big plastic storage tubs with locking lids, which I can have for as long as a year, so I will use them and label them and if it takes me months to get my new workshop area set up, so be it.

It looks as if the young couple who want this house, Justin and Dana, are going to be able to buy it, so now we are hammering out the details, and will await the financial approval. It would be great to have another art-and-gardening family here! I've a deep conviction it is going to work out just fine, that it's part of the larger story that seems to be evolving. The genius loci is strong here, and seems to be looking out for itself quite well. I don't mean to sound all Star-Warsy about it, but there it is.

Both Steve and I picked up on the sense of the place at the new house, too. My mother did, as well, and a couple other friends did from just seeing the picture of it, including my friend Euphine, who has been a guardian angel on earth for me many times. So I do think that little house wants us there as much as we want to be there. It's a good fit. In her most recent email my mother said not to worry about Thanksgiving as she was taking care of it, but I can have Christmas at the new place, so to keep my decorations where I can get my hands on them. It's nice to have my parents as enthusiastic about our move as we are. And Nick of course is still shaking his head in disbelief, as he never thought I'd move back to Valparaiso again.

Everyone we run into asks us if we are going to have the gallery in Valpo, and seem disappointed that we have no immediate plans to do so. Maybe someday. Maybe someday we will buy a condo to live in and keep the house to use for office and gallery space. But that is a bridge to cross if and when we ever come to it. At this time my calling is to paint.

Any time now Dana will arrive with her parents, who want to see the house. I hope for her sake they like it, too.

New Site, New Look, & New Life

Steve has been designing a new website for me, and if you are reading this you have already seen what he's done. I love it. He has managed to capture my whole p.o.v. and style, and seeing it on the screen is an incredible experience. I love the new logo he made out of my name, and now I want it on all sorts of printed material--business cards, brochures, a sign for my future art fair canopy, a t-shirt! I've always known in theory how good graphic design contributes to a company's image and marketing, but have never been on the receiving end of it. Let me tell you something--it's powerful. It "gels" so many intangibles, sensibilities you never realized you felt until this happens.

Tonight I need to dredge up my resume and update it. Steve will upload it to the website and it will thus be available to future collectors and employers. This is such a huge step forward, and comes at such a fortuitous time. Thank you, Steve!