In My Creative Room

Creativity is a product of the mind – at least that’s where it originates. The eyes see, the ears hear, the brain assimilates and often a creative idea is hatched. Once imagined the idea needs to be nurtured to become something of substance.

An art studio is an incubator of sorts where those creative ideas are nurtured. I turned to Wikipedia to learn the origin of the word studio. They indicate it evolved from the Italian studio which is derived from the Latin studium and otherwise translates to study or zeal.  I’m immediately reminded of the zeal with which Jackson Pollack worked in his studio!  

Often, aspiring artists feel as if they aren’t really artists unless they have a studio. It’s tantamount to a pilot without a 747 to fly, an intellectual without an arm’s length of  college degrees, a gourmet chef without a Wolfgang Puck kitchen, a scientist without a lab.

I have artist friends who have “real” studios they rent in all kinds of buildings including repurposed factories and they are, I confess, enviable places. There’s something idyllically appealing about a grandiose studio where you can paint with the zeal of Pollack, if that’s your style, and have wall space galore to display the vast amounts of art you’ve created. There’s something compelling about that Bohemian allure of a studio away from home, even if it’s not clear across the ocean. I also know artists who have erected a separate, free-standing one on their home property or who have built a studio addition onto their existing home. There’s a practicality about having a space dedicated to the unavoidable and necessary mess of creating and storage of the inevitable accumulation of copious artistic supplies, a place you can shut the door and leave the creative mess ferment until the next time you get back to your nurturing. Having to clean a project and supplies off the dinner table every night is such a drag on the creative process.

Almost 20 years ago at the beginning of my suddenly taking baby steps at drawing and such, I’d do so while nestled on the love seat in our living room in front of the tube. Drawing turned into dabbling with watercolor pencils. A little water in a cup on a folding TV tray table worked for awhile until I moved on to actual watercolor paints. I’m no Pollack but I am an exuberant artist belying my normal propensity for neatness. My expansion into watercolors made creating while on the love seat a bit of a stickier wicket. I needed more space and a safer place to dabble with potential water and paint mess and to spread out more, expand those creative wings.

We had an awesome sitting room at the end of our hallway. French doors, a 4’ square skylight at the top of a large shaft up through the ceiling, two large casement windows over a window seat, two overstuffed comfy chairs and two square end tables filled the modest 8’x 9′-ish space. It had no closets. It was just intended to be a room to, well, sit in. When we designed the house I wanted a sitting room and absolutely loved that cozy little space. It seemed so extravagant at the time, something the Vanderbilt’s would have had but not something anyone I knew had in their home. And, although we did use it as intended to sit and read on occasion, it was the best option, room-wise, to invoke artistic eminent domain of one side of the modest space as my art explorations expanded.

So, out went one overstuffed, Scandinavian design chair relocated to a corner in the living room and one square end table to the basement. In went a tall 23” x 35” table and wooden stool. The table was only a little more than twice the area of the folding table I used in front of the tube but it felt so spacious and the height made it seem a loftier avocation. The laws of physics are hard to dodge, specifically, the one about nature abhorring a vacuum. Now that I had a new place to exercise my growing artistic endeavors, I also needed someplace to store my increasing stockpile of art supplies and art technique books. In came a new, small oak bookcase.

I’m sure you see where this is going. Eventually, as my confidence grew and dabbling grew into exploration with acrylics, canvas, mixed media and more and more supplies,  well, the other overstuffed chair had to go too. An 8′ x 9′ room isn’t a spacious area and I soon found out my creativity didn’t blossom in a neat environment – it needed room so I could see all my materials and ponder the pieces I was working on to see what else they might need.

It’s no surprise then that a more compact upholstered chair was found to replace the last of the original overstuffed ones from the use-to-be sitting room, allowing me to  still sit back comfortably and ponder the work I was involved in but not take up as much real estate. Eventually I also got an even larger wood, draft style table whose top could be tilted up if I wanted, replacing the 23” x 25” table.

When I was a teen the Beach Boys had a song I loved. I played it often in the sanctuary of my bedroom. I loved the feeling and the harmony of In My Room. What I now dubbed my “Petite Studio” had become my adult sanctuary of creativity. I loved the feeling it gave me and the harmony I felt with my mushrooming artistic expression. It’s fascinating that no matter how old we get, and if we’re lucky enough to recognize and respect it, we don’t loose and can still feed the precious child in each of us even though it comes out in different ways as adults. The feeling my Petite Studio gives me matches that of having my own room as a kid. Maybe that’s because as a kid I was playing and as an adult in my art studio, albeit, not a spacious studio in a repurposed factory or other large space, I’m playing with my art and making discoveries about myself just as I was as a kid.

There’ve been refinements and additions to the things I have in my Petite Studio since I first declared eminent domain to that first half of the sitting room. The last end table is gone replace by a funky rusting metal framed thing found at a fun treasures/junk store. It’s topped with wood planks Steve cut and secured for me which I stained with steel wool and vinegar concoction to give it a grey, weathered look. There’s a slew of other wire and wicker baskets to organize all my stuff (no closets) and one side of a cupola also found in the same treasures/junk store that I put a backing on and use as a storage rack of sorts. I just love the look and feel of my creative sanctuary. It became one more canvas on which I could express my creativity.

Two and a half years ago Steve and I sold our business of 25 years that we ran from our home initially from a bedroom-turned office until we built a larger physical addition just for the business. After the sale I could have moved my studio into the larger, add-on space that had been our business office with lots of windows and our now, personal office could have been moved into the old sitting room a.k.a. my Petite Studio. But I really, really love the coziness of my Petite Studio – remember that Beach Boys song. The laws of physics never sleep. Because of the nature abhorring a vacuum one, I did, however, spill over and this time claim possession of the once bedroom, turned first-business-office-before-the-add-on business office, and designated it my Petite Studio Annex!

The Annex now has a 36” tall table, I had to have that was on sale. The table’s 54” x 36” and can expand to 54” square. There’s also another new cabinet for more spill over storage, a large easel, some bought lamps and a funky hanging light fixture Steve and I dreamed up and brought to fruition. The Annex gives me more room to work on larger pieces more comfortably and I’ve also claimed two of the four large sections of floor-to-ceiling bookshelves that were there for the business.

Unused canvases, some completed art, frames and other accumulation of art print backing supplies and such that used to be stored in numerous closets throughout the house are now all together on industrial type storage racks in the basement where the meat and potatoes of our street rod parts business used to occur. 

If I were you reading this, I’d be thinking – well it doesn’t sound like her Petite Studio is so petite after all. I suppose that if you calculated ALL the space my artistic stuff, my tools of the trade, consumes, it might seem a tad like an enactment of America’s Westward Expansion. In my defense, my creativity would be overloaded and therefore suppressed having all my accumulation in one area. Plus, the laws of physics must be respected. It’s futile to resist.

Ultimately, though, the nucleus of my studio is my imagination where ideas are born and the modest 8 ’x 9’ room is the incubator where those ideas are developed and let loose to try out their wings to see if they’ll fledge. My Petite Studio is a place to do my creative dreaming and my scheming, to nurture my art and, I believe, a place that is still nurturing me as well.

Footnote: In case you’re not familiar with or have forgotten the Beach Boys song In My Room, Goggle it. There’s a live version and a studio version (which I prefer without all the teen screaming). I tried to link it to the post for your convenience but it’s a locked URL and can’t be shared here.

Posted by carol@mylifewithcreativity.com & filed under Studio. This post has 2 comments.