Sunday, June 27, 2010

Art Addiction and Studio Lies

I've been thinking about addiction and the many forms it comes in. For me it's art supplies, children's picture books, art books, other books (spirituality, history, novels, yiddishkeit) collecting art, making art, and a tendency to work too hard. Today I tried to sell some of my squillions of beloved social theory, art education, and qualitative research books today at our 2 local book buying places, but they weren't too interested. May make a posting here in future and see if anyone wants any cheap. Am really trying to pare down and do more with less but just watched this terrific video from Claudine Hellmuth on making art with beeswax (a simplified form of encaustic)  http://www.artworkshops.tv/index.php?page=shop.product_details&flypage=shop.flypage&product_id=39&option=com_virtuemart&Itemid=102  (it's free but you have to sign up and register) and now of course I want to buy all those supplies. My studio in Sacramento is the smallest that I've had in decades which means I need to get rid of stuff rather than getting more. Sigh.

The other thing I was thinking about was a conversation with my friend Caron Dunn who is another needle-felter and an exceptional teaching artist for all sorts of art forms. She too has a small studio in which she creates a lot of work and like mine it has a fair to excessive amount of chaos and mess. Anyway, we started complaining about our messy studios and comparing it to all those gorgeous artists studio you see online, when Caron exclaimed "Those pictures are lies! No one's studio is that tidy. They wouldn't be able to get any work done!" This instantly made me feel much better although tomorrow I am hoping to clean up my studio a little, even if it only is for a few precious days before I get down and dirty with my supplies.

1 comment:

Caron Dunn said...

Just spent the entire morning trying to find my desk under piles of paper and wool and various flotsam, it took all morning because I kept getting distracted by minute glass eyes, the play of light on gold thread, the fabulous green I dyed a small piece of felt, trying to remember the recipe for that dye, etc,etc,etc, I think I may need ritalin.
So sorry about little Guido.