(no subject)

I occasionally run across artists whose greatest desire is to have a grand studio all to themselves, to arrange and decorate however they wish. There’s nothing wrong with that, mind you. Everyone likes to have space of their own, and having an uncluttered (relatively) work space can make a HUGE difference. However, wanting that bigger space shouldn’t be a hindrance to actually making your art happen, if you have a smaller space that will still work.

Obviously, if your art is welding scrap metal together to create fantastic oversized sculptures, you’re at the very least going to need a yard or garage to work in. But for most of us creative types, our media is rather more portable and less of a fire hazard. I primarily work with hides and bones and found objects in my art, and really I need more space for storage of the things I work with than I need to make the art itself. Over the years I’ve had a variety of workspaces:

—When I used to live alone in one bedroom apartments, the living room would be my bedroom, and the bedroom would be a combination art and ritual space. This was wonderfully convenient and roomy. The same went for when my ex-husband and I lived in a three bedroom duplex a few years ago.

—In Seattle, I lived with my ex in a TINY two bedroom house (it really was only suitable for one person). All my supplies were stuffed into the back of the laundry room, and my workspace was a patch of the living room floor roughly three feet by four feet and I couldn’t leave any partial projects out because we had a cat. It reminded me of way back when I lived with my parents, and my work space was even a tad smaller than that, in my room.

—These days I share a two bedroom place with smcinpdx; we’ve converted the living room into a shared workspace, though admittedly I take up more room than he does there. Still, my actual work are is about five feet by three feet of floor, plus some storage space for partial and completed projects, plus a small patch of floor by the window for painting projects. So I make all the things that I do in roughly twenty square feet of space.

I could potentially have the smaller bedroom all for my own work, but A) I like having quick access to the computer when I’m working for documentaries and research, and B) while I used to prefer solitude while working, today I prefer having my partner’s company while we both work on our respective stuff and things. So for me, it’s not so much about quantity of space as it is quality.

Granted, again, my primary medium is fairly portable—I’ve sat in the passenger seat on long drives and stitched belt loops and carabiners onto tails, and I sat and painted a couple of drums at SteamCon last month, just sitting at a table in the dining area of the hotel. But it’s good practice in being more flexible, both with regards to space and distraction, so that whenever my circumstances change I can change with them as need be so the art can continue.

So what about you? What sorts of art space do you have, what can you work with, and what would you ideally like?

Remember that we are among the most privileged beings to ever live on this planet.

We as a species have the ability to choose what we eat, where we live, with whom we mate, and how we raise our young, to unprecedented levels. From the moment we learned how to use fire, through our ability to build ever stronger shelters, and into the increasingly abstract thought processes we communicate to each other, we have altered the world more than any other animal. And we have done this at a price, a price paid not only by our fellow human beings, but every other living being that shares this place with us.

This is not a prompt to lose yourself in guilt and despair, but simply to take note of the immense comforts that you enjoy and to realize how unique they are. Also, a gentle reminder that these comforts did not come out of nowhere, but are drawn from the interwoven webwork of animals, plants, and the Earth itself. We take and we take—what do we give back? There are so many ways we can give back, starting with not taking more than we need.

And even the smallest gifts are important.