The Art Room

I wrote about how moving makes you take inventory and how I am sad over the loss of our books, among other things (though it's an important purge). Recently, we also gave away our couches and coffee table, as well as JewishGuy's office furniture. We're giving JewishGuy's sister our dining room furniture to hold on to for an indefinite amount of time. We will arrive in New York with... what?

Having my own art room has provided me with the space to collect a large number of art supplies, especially over the course of the last two years. I've always had this cart:

(This picture is from 2005, when Lilly was a baby, but already a budding assistant)

This cart contained basically all of my art supplies until grad school, when my art room became a new frontier for all kinds of media I hadn't much explored before: screenprinting, fabric dying, small found-objects sculptures, fiber art (crochet, embroidery, felt sculptures, etc). I began making stationary and small books last summer, and had a whole shelf dedicated to that inventory, plus what I collected from others. Before this art room, my art cart mostly had supplies for linoleum cut relief printing, collaging, and painting (acrylic). These supplies, too, exploded - even before the new art room - as I bought more magazines than I could handle, bought new linoleum blocks, and collected a massive amount of acrylic paint for the mural project that inspired this blog.

When we moved to Chicago I had the art cart, a folder of paper and prints, and maybe a box of miscellaneous supplies. Packing up the art room now took at least 8 boxes, some of them very large.

Our apartment in New York isn't very large. It could sort of be considered as being a two bedroom, but one of those bedrooms is very narrow and long, which makes it practically impossible to use as a bedroom. The last time we had a two bedroom apartment (in Houston), the spare room became JewishGuy's office, where I kept my art supplies and a small table to sometimes make art on. Now the second room is going to be my art room, with a small table for JewishGuy to put his laptop on when he's at home.

I'm going to buy a new, fold-up drafting table. I've already imagined how I can set up the space for optimal use of the drafting table while still having a place for my computer - I have a desktop now (old school!) so it actually needs a permanent place to sit. I imagined where the plants would go and where I would keep my art supplies so they are within easy reach of my seat.

I'm so excited!



(This month's theme is "saved.")