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I think my favorite studio container has to be the picnic silverware caddies I’ve picked up at thrift stores. As mentioned yesterday, I was able to get all my paint brushes, plus some pencils and even a pair of scissors, into a single caddy.
My tool caddies - oh so handy!
They can hold all sorts of things – scissors, pencils, brushes, awls, hammers, pliers, rotary cutters, small bottles – so I have one for each of my activity areas with the tools most commonly used in that area. They come in various materials and are easy to move around. Thanks to caddies, I can always find my scissors (which can be a trick when I sew and the fabric starts to pile up and drift all over the table).
Thanks to the clean-up/organization I’ve done, I’ve spent time playing in my studio every day this week. Even brainless sewing (assembling quilt blocks into a quilt top) has been fun thanks to my stress-free creative environment.
Of course, I’m not really done with the studio yet. I want to put up shelves to hold my finished projects and display inspiriational materials. I need to organize my closet. I can find things in there right now, but not all the storage is appropriate for what I have (ex: all my yarn is in one huge bin). My bead collection needs to be re-organized – everything has a container, but there’s no rhyme or reason to what is where. I also need to get better shelves and/or containers for my doll-making materials, which include a variety of strangely shaped bits and pieces. So there’s more to do, but I think I’ll wait until January before I tackle the next organizational task. I’d rather spend my time right now basking in the fun of a clean studio.
Once I had a plan (thank you, Julie Morgenstern!) and had thought things through via the writing exercise, I was ready to start sorting. This was the longest part of the process. I had to make piles and piles and piles of supplies as I went through the materials that were stacked on the floor, sitting on the tables, and stuffed in containers. I had a box for each of my large categories (sewing, paper arts, or embellishment) for the really homeless odds and ends, but I actually spent a lot of time just putting things away. Even though it didn’t look like it, I had some areas in my studio that were already well-defined, and I used those locations to collect and pile related materials as I unearthed them.
The tidy view from the door
The hardest part of this process was out in the middle, when I’d been sorting for days and still wasn’t done. Everything was a mess and it felt like I wasn’t getting anywhere. Because I didn’t know how much of what I had to deal with, I didn’t always know how I was going to actually store something even though I had a good idea where in the room I wanted to keep it. Writing really helped me to work through the process. Because I’d already done some writing to prepare for the project, I made a point of writing whenever I was feeling stuck. Before I started, I would state my goals for a session, then at the end, write about whatever I was unsure about. Just by writing things down, I often found a solution. At one point, just making a list of all the piles sitting around that needed homes helped me to focus on finding the right containers and getting things put away. Much as I wanted to bull through this process as quickly as possible, I think I needed the time between sessions both to recover my energy and to cook-up more ideas of things to try. In actual hours, I put in maybe two days worth of time, but it just wasn’t possible for me to do all this work in just two days.
For the record, Morgenstern forsees the slogging stage of this process. One of the reasons for the questions in the analysis phase is to build a list to help the organizer stay focused and motivated. When I was particularly stumped, I would pick up her book and reread her instructions, and that often gave me a new idea or reminded me of something I had forgotten. In case you haven’t guessed, I highly recommend her book for organizing a studio, or anything else for that matter.
Tomorrow: Getting my worktable back.
So, I have finally got my studio in the shape I was hoping for. The majority of my supplies have been sorted and organized and I know where they are. I’ve been trying to get to this point for months, but the reason it has finally happened is that I got a copy of Julie Morgenstern’s book Organizing from the Inside Out three weeks ago, read it, and followed through.
Morgenstern’s book was full of ideas and advice that really worked for me. She recommends planning and writing things down, talks about the many things that can get in the way of being organized, and offers a great way to think about the room or area to be organized. Then she gives you specific steps to follow in implementing your plan.
One thing that was really different from any other method I have ever tried is the detailed analysis she has you do before you get started. She has a set of questions to work through before you do anything else, so I sat down and wrote out my answers.
One of the questions is: what is already working? This proved to be a valuable question for me to answer for two reasons. First, it’s positive. As much of a disaster as I had on my hands, it helped me to realize that there were bits of organization I had put in place that were actually working. The second thing it did was encourage me to really try her ideas. It turns out that what was already working actually followed many of the suggestions she makes (like assign everything a specific home, group items by activity, and use an appropriate container). Finding out that I not only was doing something right, but that the things she was suggesting were already working for me made me much more eager to try her system.
When it comes to planning, she looks at a room or area with a kindergarten class room in mind. In kindergarten, there are certain activities that happen in certain areas. Everything you need for that activity is located right there, in easy-to-use storage that makes clean up a snap. So I applied this concept to my studio.
My studio has an overwhelming amount of material to deal with. I quilt, paint, draw, bead, collage, make books, and make art dolls. So I needed areas that would allow for the different sorts of things I do. I wound up with three “activities”: sewing (which includes cutting and ironing fabric), paper arts (drawing/painting/collage/bookmaking), and embellishing (beading and construction of dolls and their props). I decided to use my long work table for paper arts and embellishing, since some of my work combines the two. I put all the paper arts supplies on shelves off one end of the table, and the “embellishment” materials on the shelves at the other end. The other side of the room is sewing, with my sewing desk, cutting table, and notions storage.
My sewing area with cutting table and sewing desk
Having this plan really helped me when it was time to go to work.
Tomorrow: The hard part
For the last three weeks, I’ve been putting serious time into getting my studio re-organized. I’ve worked roughly every other day for 2-4 hours at a time. Yesterday, I hit a major milestone – I found the floor. At least, it seems like what I did. What actually happened is that everything I’d been sorting and piling finally had a container and/or home. All of a sudden, my studio was clean.
(For before pictures, click here.)
It feels like a complete and utter miracle. Not only do I have surfaces to work on, but I know where everything is. In the last 24 hours, I’ve done two projects (start to finish) in record time, without frustration. In both cases, I had an idea, could lay my hands on everything I needed to complete the project, and was working in no time. Clean up was easy because everything has a home. Every step of both projects was easy and fun! Wheee!
I’ve decided to spend this week blogging about the process involved in getting from studio hell to studio heaven. Tomorrow: The secret to my success!
At the opening of my family’s art show Animal, Vegetable, Spiritual: A Family View, I was asked if I had any formal art training. I haven’t. But I have a photographer for a father and a ceramicist for a mother, and I don’t know how many art museums I was dragged through as a kid. My sister has been drawing since the day she first picked up a crayon, went on to attend art school, and has become a glass and fiber artist as an adult. I got interested in quilting in 1996, joined the Tompkins County Quilters Guild, and became friends with many brilliant fiber artists. So the answer is: No, I haven’t had any formal training, but I’ve had plenty exposure to both art and artists. My art has been learned through osmosis.
Two years ago, we were discussing the fact that every member of our family is an artist and wondering how unusual that might be. The idea of having a show as a family came up and we all agreed it would be fun to do. In fact, it turned out to be a lot of work, but it all came together nicely in the end. Last weekend, I went to Maryland to attend the opening reception, which I am happy to say was packed with enthusiastic viewers.
The artists at the reception: Don, Cleo, Jane, and Kit Dunsmore (Photo by Russ Poole)
Here are some pictures of the gallery and the artists with their work to give you a flavor of the show.
My father, Don Dunsmore, with his photo "quilt" Morning Glories
My mother, Jane Dunsmore, with her piece Free Ride II
My sister, Cleo Dunsmore, with her necklace Sea Turtle
And me, Kit Dunsmore, with my Quilt for An Inner Child
Animal, Vegetable, Mineral: A Family View is on display until November 29, 2009 at The Delaplaine Visual Arts Education Center in Frederick, Maryland.
