Where This Woman Works

There’s a magazine that I love to slowly feast upon called Where Women Create. It’s full of gorgeous photos of airy studios lined with antique apothecary chests or library card catalogs and carefully staged collections of brushes, buttons, books, or hatboxes in beautifully lit, usually spacious rooms where the artist sits in a comfy, pillowed chair dreamily stitching, or painting at a repurposed door-from-a-local-Victorian-house-turned-worktable.

Inspiring!

Inconceivable! (I do know what that word means)

Impossible!

If it is possible, I surely don’t know those artists. Mostly, if we are fortunate enough to have a studio space that doesn’t double as the dining room table, it is jam-packed with art supplies, finished work with no place to go, failed paintings that we plan on reworking at some distant point in the future, and several projects currently underway.

I mean, take a gander at this hodgepodge: The back left is where I sew, bins overflowing with fabric and shelves spilling over with notions. I try to keep this area “clean”, meaning free of paint or anything that leaves a mark. This is occasionally successful.

To the right of that is a tiled surface (formerly a wet bar for the bachelor that made this his boudoir) where I do encaustic (hot wax and resin) work with a lower risk of setting the house on fire, though the fear is real.

The central area is where I paint; easel and table, with 2 more easels folded up under the table at present. All along the perimeter of the room is where I store all the paints and potions: an early 1900’s pharmacy cabinet from a hospital where my grandmother worked (oh, hey, that’s magazine worthy!) and the Craftsman tool chests my husband bought me for storage. Man, are they great! You can’t begin to imagine how much they are holding. In the foreground, I keep an antique enamel-top kitchen table (could be magazine worthy), laptop, pens and papers for list making, bookbinding, and sketchbook work. You can see a lot of the finished work on my website.

I have been able to section off one corner for reading, ruminating, and waiting for paint to dry. Remember the bachelor boudoir I mentioned above? Underneath this platform is a a ginormous Jacuzzi tub built for two. Or Three. Yes, really. Ick. Can you hear Barry White crooning in the background? I had to smudge a lot of sage in that room. What a waste of space. My dear husband, after several years of coercion, built a plywood cover for it so I could use the space. I love it here: it’s a cozy little nook for an afternoon cuppa and a good book.

So, while most of it will always be grimy and splattered, and sometimes my bare feet stick to the floor, I’m very happy to have a great space to work and not even have to leave home to do it. Thanks for taking the tour with me and, as always, thank you for your support and encouragement as I play along this path.