Out of the holidays

My children and grandchildren have returned to their lives, the holiday decorations are tucked away, laundry done, the house cleaned. I sit here with a mug of tea, savoring the quiet, outside sounds muffled by the first snowfall, the antique clock ticking behind me. Though I am grateful for the busting-out-at-the-seams couple of weeks in our tiny house, the shared laughter and meals and happy chaos that is always part of a family gathering, in the midst of it there is little room for contemplation or deep work in the studio.

After hectic months of nonstop activity, making, mini-trips, family and holidays; of the sensory overload of decorations, lights, food, and conversation, the sudden withdrawal of all leaves me feeling adrift and a little melancholy. The energy and excitement generated through this summer of making feels a long way off, and I feel disjointed and off kilter. When I am disconnected from my studio for a time it is difficult for me to find a rhythm. There is a resistance to starting anew.

Where to begin

My body protests when I drive it as if it were still 20 or 30 or 40 years old. The sense of running out of time, of wanting to learn all that I can, try all that I want to, can get in the way of relishing the process itself. I am trying to learn to treat myself with some kindness on those days when all I long to do is curl up with tea and a book or wrap myself in a blanket and stare at the fire. To recognize that a pause, the stillness and going within, is as essential to my well-being and art creation as the periods of intense action.

In addition to my regular post-holiday studio resistance, having casters put on my studio worktable to enable more flexibility in my studio space, necessitated removing everything from its top and the shelves beneath…making the studio that much more unnavigable. I look at the piles in my studio wondering where to begin.

One step at a time

As a way back into the studio, I decide to work while listening to one or two episodes (about an hour each) of a favorite art podcast (Art Juice). During that time, I will get done what I get done and then turn off the light and leave the rest for the next day. This feels manageable to me. In this slow, meditative shifting through piles I am re-discovering projects that I had begun or mostly completed but hadn't; processes and materials I had investigated but never followed to completion. Here are partially done prints on oxidized steel and patinated copper. Here are the first papers that I made when taking classes at Dieu Donne and Carriage House. Here are the earliest of my burnt drawings that launched an entire series of work. The work questions: Is this something I want to pursue? Is there something I bring to it now that I wasn't able to before? Does it want to go to a place I wasn't ready to go to when I first began? What calls for me to further explore?

I hang the work I did this summer: cyanotypes, handmade paper embedded with found birds’ nests and eggshells, my first forays into paper sculpture. I lay out the stitched teabag collages from the Marking Time series. I sit, surrounded by my work, to be present in the space and open to listening to the work. To look. To think about. In the finding, the sorting and organizing, displaying, conversations emerge between bodies of work, materials, methods and processes. I discover connections, fresh ways of looking at the work. The glimmering of nascent ideas and possibilities begin to percolate. There is beauty in allowing my curiosity and hands to lead me and to trust that the making will lead to meaning and understanding.

In time I will choose one or two things on which to focus for the next few months and follow these to where they lead me. Right now, at the start of the studio overhaul, I feel grateful to have this space… this time… this pause…

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