May 7, 2009 – Summerhouse Art

This weekend we’ll be participating the Mother’s Day Paint In at Hatley Castle. I’m looking outside right now and wondering is the weather going to cooperate? Today it’s raining, which is good, free water for the garden and all that. But on Sunday, I hope it’s one of those sunny warm days. Now we’ve done this show before and it did rain but only for a little bit in the morning as we were setting up our booth. Then it became a beautiful day smelling fresh from the rain and made the gardens glisten and sparkle.

Our Tent with the first of many visitors (after the rain)

These events are always a lot of fun for the exhibitors too. I’ll have Will and Hart there to help with the booth. We’ll be showing off our new garden sculptures and it’s always good to get feedback from the people browsing, about what they like.

Every summer I give classes in mosaics and creativity. These shows are my way to get the word out. It’s really something that I really enjoy doing.

hatley-show1 — Signing up for a fun-filled class

We often get couples or friends signing up together and they have a blast buying used dishes at thrift shops during the first class and then learning to break dishes in the second class. I get some real mixed reactions about breaking dishes. Some people have a hard time overcoming that conditioning that says it’s very very bad to break things. Others are just so gung ho to take out their frustrations on a dish that you have to stop them from pounding the dish into dust! But in the end, everyone makes something that’s totally them, and from that point on never looks at a dish without wondering what it will look like broken. Now we use special cutters to break up the dish and don’t smash them with a hammer unless it’s one of those really really tough plates that just won’t succumb any other way.

The other reason I love these shows is that we all take turns sneaking off and looking at everyone else’s booth. We see people that we’ve seen at other shows and get a chance to catch up and often we see some things that really inspire us to whole other directions. At the end of the day when we’ve lugged all the booth contents back to the car and packed it all up for the day, we’re tired but happy. And ready for a pizza!

The other day I looked into my studio and thought what a mess! I’ve been working on a couple of things that are taking some time. And with being busy with so many other things I’ve let it get just a little too messy.

Now, I can live with messy but when it gets to “knee deep’, I know I need to do something. Just put a few things away, take out garbage, sweep up. Now I’ve got surfaces to work on again. Ah, bliss.

My studio is filled to the brim. I like to say it’s abundant. It’s full of ornaments, lots and lots of dishes usually organized by color or pattern, lots of houseplants. Best of all, I have music. All kinds of music from Music of World to jazz to old rock to opera. We have a huge collection of music what with the hundreds of old LP’s to the all the tapes and CD’s Will and I have found and collected from garage sales and thrifting. I tend to need music to work by. If I can’t understand the words, that’s ok too, it allows my thoughts to roam.

Recycled salad containers make great storage

When I have mosaic students,I tell them there are no rules, but of course I have just a couple. You absolutely need a place to work. And you need music to work by. I’m lucky with a room in the house dedicated to being a studio. I can make a mess and then close the door. Of course our house is sort of a studio everywhere. Sometimes I might sculpt a small piece or string a new bracelet of found beads while watching TV or a movie on the living room couch. So of course the coffee table is covered with a bag of clay, a board with a sculpture on it and boxes of beads. We don’t designate a particular area. The dining room has our office and computer equipment in it as well as another desk for Will to work on collage pieces.

Our ultimate dream is to live in a huge studio. A great generous space to work in with a area for eating, sleeping and the necessities of living tucked into one area of the space. I am always shocked by home designs. Homes are designed it seems, to sit and do nothing. You see home plans with living rooms and family rooms. Builders and designers never seem to make room for creative pursuits. These days if you factor in the cost of square footage on your mortgage or rent as the case may be, it seems that you really should be looking at how well your home will work for you or allow you to work preferably on something creative.

It’s important to me to find a space somewhere to work in. I think too often it’s easy to say what you need is not important, but to me happiness is something that comes from being creative. If I’m happy so is everyone else, trust me. The same goes for Will and Eric. We all need to be creative to be happy. So we decided that happiness is more important than having a guest room or a dining room. And we tend to use pretty well every room in the place to create in.

Ornaments waiting to be placed in a mosaic

Some of my students have gotten really creative making a space to work. One lived in a tiny basement suite, with two small dogs. She made her coffee table into her studio work table. To avoid bits of broken dishes littering the rugs creating a hazard for the pups, she broke all her dishes inside a box, so no shards could fly around the rug. Another, created a space in a garage, in front of a window and brought in a CD player. A good friend, who had wanted to write a book with the words floating around in her head for ages, got the idea to put her computer in a closet and create a writing space. The book was written in weeks!

It takes a bit of creativity to make a work space sometimes or just a rethinking of what you want your home to be. A place to sit or a place to get happy and creative in.

Day: May 7, 2009

The First Craft Fair of the Season

Room to Create