Studio Notes no.3

Welcome To My Cupboard

Creative folk of humble means will often be the most inventive. Denied or excluded from studio space or the perfect quiet room, an artist who wants to create will have to find a way round physical limitations. How they choose to deal with their lack of space to work may shape their work and the ideas that emerge.

When I moved here to the house on the hill I knew I would have very limited space to work within. At that time, I had two small children and a very small working budget. I had made a choice to move away from a past life. This was not a wonderful time of reinvention but a painful, slow healing process. There were practical considerations like how to not not make an impossible mess. My sister found and gave me a second-hand bureau desk which has worked out to be the ideal space for drawing. Over time an integrated approach to working has evolved: things are kept in their place which is part of the greater space, stuff is boxed or displayed; there is no tip-toeing around me as I work*. My children have grown up with me at work. Life goes on.

*When I use my sewing machine for drawing, however, I do so when the room is empty and I will not be disturbed. I cannot hold a conversation and stitch-draw on my sewing machine. I need all my focus! I tend to go into something like another dimension when I am stitch-drawing. Which is why asking me if I have seen your book/shoes/phone is not a good idea right at that moment. Actually, to be fair to my son and daughter, it is rarely them who ask such a question - it is nearly always me who mislays things. 

It took me a while to figure things out. It took a few years even, just to accept that here I was and I could either embrace the smallness of the space I had or forever be frustrated. If I wanted to I could push the limits of the space.  Or, I could accept there were things I could and could not do and in a way this was going to help me find direction. 

**

How small a space can you work within? I have given some thought to this, of course. And how I might just adapt to working in further lack of space, if we were to move to a smaller home, for example.

I have considered converting a cupboard into a studio. It would be a tardis. A world of its own. I might step inside (or sit inside) and be transported into a world of art-making that is quite apart from here and now…. And it would be just as you might expect: otherworldly, a glittering space of wonder…. Shapes and forms dancing in timeless harmony…. I might have guests invited in for tea, now and then, to show them my latest sketchbooks….

The cupboard - is one I purchased several years ago from an Ebay seller, a very large rustic pine cupboard. Made in France many years ago and designed for kitchen storage, the shelves have ample room and a small person could sleep/live inside (though this has never been tested out here). It is currently used for the storage of stuff - eg: everything and anything including paper, packaging materials for sending out art orders, boxes of fabric and wool. It is also a museum of old phones and laptops (apparently now worth a fortune, we really should sort them out), abandoned knitting projects and paperwork. 

If I sort everything out, acquire basic carpentry skills…. I might cut a hole in the shelving so that I could actually sit inside! I could put a light in, a cable could run through the hole in the door or I could use battery operated or…. Somehow my sewing machine, along with everything else, could be accomodated. And there would be ‘wall space’ and things organised, a pull out drawing surface, easily enough space for everything and I might just feel as though I am actually within….

Within my own created world and not three steps from the kitchen. Well I would still be three steps from the kitchen. But with the door closed.

But I would miss the daylight and bird song. I would miss my son walking by to get a drink from the kitchen. The conversation we might have. What are you watching on Youtube? That’s a nice drawing. 

And would I really be able to work inside the cupboard? With the door closed? 

I look inside the crammed-full-of-stuff cupboard (let’s gloss over where I would put everything!) and I can see the gleaming artist’s space, see just how vast the space could be. I see a configuration of art things and gleaming possibilities. I see ink bottles lined up and shining in semi darkness. I see a light and shade that takes away all sense of time and space. I see papers neatly arranged in a way that they can never be if simply out there in the familial world. 

Somehow a neatness and order would be possible where in reality it is simply not.

Children like making camps and houses. It's a basic thing learned from infancy: the need for shelter. Children build shelters from controlling adults: no big people allowed! My sister and I would spend hours stretching bedsheets between bits of furniture to make our own home. We would furnish the space with the things that mattered: pillows, snacks, books and a record player. This was our world and we could make the rules. 

My cupboard dreams are quite possibly an extension of these play spaces. I have never grown up completely and do not wish to. The child in me is a wilful little tinker at times.

But now, let’s be honest, if I had a large studio space it would be full of stuff and I would be forever rearranging, I can see it, I can see into that parallel world: shoe boxes of things and bookcases, old trunks of fabrics, many cabinets of curiosities. In other words: a  very much larger version of what I have now.

And the most likely scenario, if I had a larger, dedicated studio space: I would be camping in one corner. Or living inside a large cupboard. Or working from home.

*

After writing the above I was reminded of a project I started way back in 2016 - designing miniature studio spaces! How could I have just started this project and abandoned it? Because: ideas jostle and perhaps I had to get on with things to sell (a reality) or because I wasn’t sure anyone loved it enough except for me (a possibility). Next week I will share with you how I am re-exploring this project (because it’s never too late) with new miniature studio photos! And ideas on making small worlds. Until then, here’s a photo from 2016

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