Time drags on and so do the details of finishing up the move into the studio. We've completed the main electric and hanging shelves, boxes and blinds. I've moved most of my art materials into the studio and already, I need more space. Not surprising. I am a bit overwhelmed as I've moved and started to rearrange items like foam, string, rubber, stamps, gourds, beads, findings, stencils, bats, banding wheels, reclaimed clay, metal wire, sheet metal, glaze containers, glues, hooks, sketchbooks, colored pencils, acrylic paints, glass ornaments, fabric dyes, reference books, old issues of
Ceramics Monthly and
Metalsmith,
American Style and
Art Calendar and boxes of miscellaneous items. Years of collecting things for future use and now the time is here. Now. Or soon to be now. Finally. I almost started crying as we were hanging the last of the storage shelves and I started to arrange the drawers. I know I'll beat myself up for not producing enough initially and I'm sure I'll feel like the pace is glacially slow but I'm in the midst of a huge transition for me. I'm barely aware of it except for those small moments when I can look back and see what's changed.
I've been watching some David Attenborough on satellite recently. Focusing on evolution and staring with simple organisms. Single cell and the next step, sponges. I'm fascinated with the changes of evolution, the organisms that started us and yet continue to thrive. The branches that form to allow change to happen, new organisms to rise, new possibilities, some successful, some not. Fractals, patterns, randomness and adaptation. Fluidity, diversion, natural selection, new branches, and dead ends. The time it has taken to get us to the present moment has been long. We think we're a thriving branch. What if, evolutionarily speaking, we're actually a dead end? We'll never be able to tell until the change is upon us.
At one point, I think I convinced myself that I had given up on my fine art voice and it had been replaced by graphic design, a commercial art voice. And yet I kept the boxes of pastels, the paper samples, the block stamps and beads. Just in case. If you have a nagging feeling about yourself, listen carefully. Play the hunch. Analyze your surroundings, your environment. It's shaping who you are and one never knows where you're headed next.
