Cleaning up

The other day I received a call from a woman that I met during our Open Studio Tour last October. She is a prop stylist for Seventeen Magazine, and she wanted to use some of my art in a bedroom photo shoot, the catch was that they needed the pieces by that afternoon so I only had a few hours to get everything ready. With all of my focus on getting our house fixed up I have been ignoring a huge problem, that my studio had gotten out of control. Here is how it looked,

And here was my desk,

Yikes! For me a certain amount of creative mess happens as I work, and that is just how I like it, but there is a fine line and I usually know that I've crossed it when I can't find things and the mess starts to hamper my ability to make my art. Then I've gone from creative mess to crazy mess, not good. As I was getting the pieces ready for the magazine shoot I had to face facts, a studio clean up was in order. Yesterday, was the "big dig", I was able to throw out a bunch of things (made easier by the fact that I've been going through a lot of our stuff lately, so now I'm becoming an old pro at letting go of things I don't use). I also moved a lot of the things that I don't use often, but still want access to, onto lower shelves or into boxes that I put in our closet where I can still grab them easily. Here is how things look after the clean up,

So much better, I feel like I can breathe again. I covered up the printer and the lower shelves with some pretty fabric, this simplifies things for me mentally and helps me to focus. Here is my desk after, with all of my supplies laid out where I can see them,

Here are the shelves that I organized with the supplies for printing and shipping my prints and cards for my shop, along with visual inspiration files that I turn to when I need a little visual or creative pep-up,

Here's the view out of my studio window today, it is snowing again. That stack of take-out trays on the window sill are my favorite painting palettes, they are ready and waiting next to my pad of paper where I jot down ideas as they come to me. Also on the window sill I keep a small altar of things that I've collected in nature or that have been given to me by dear friends that inspire me. Its so pretty I think I'll do it justice with a better picture in a different post,

Despite the mess, my pieces made it over to the Seventeen Magazine photo shoot in time. My contact there told me that they were featured in a bedroom shot and a desk shot. If all goes well (and they don't end up on the cutting room floor) then my work will be featured in the April issue of Seventeen, which will be in newstands at the end of March. I'll keep you posted with more details.

I must say that the kid in me is feeling giddy about being featured in Seventeen, even though I haven't read that magazine for over a decade, I was a faithful subscriber all through middle school and high school, getting excited every time my issue would arrive. I was even picked to model in a Seventeen Magazine runway show, when I was 17, but that's another story.