I am inspired …

I had a busy week: pieces to finish, hardware to install on pieces for an exhibit, sleeves to sew and so on.

On Thursday, I dropped 11 pieces of work at the Leighton Art Centre for an exhibit during the month of August. If you live in the area, feel free to visit and purchase some art for your walls. I’d love it if you purchased mine, but any other artist would be thrilled to sell a piece to grace your home. After that, I had a great visit with my friend Shirley, who is preparing to move to a new home. Exciting times!

You may be wondering what all has got to do with being inspired. As a matter of fact, chatting with Shirley inspired me to go home and clean, reorganize, cull, get rid of, and generally, declutter my studio, both upstairs and downstairs. So bright and early on Friday morning, I got up energized to get going. You see? I couldn’t sleep with thinking of a good way to reorganize my space downstairs so I could hopefully go back to teaching classes in that space.

Shower done and water and coffee in hand, I went downstairs, turned the lights on and … cringed! Yup! I am embarrassed as to what my downstairs studio has become: cluttered, messy, disorganized and “a dumping place for everything and anything”. I had to take a deep breath and remind myself that the idea of reorganizing means that you are going to make a bigger mess to start with. I decided to move bookcases from one wall to another and get rid of a couple, which meant getting rid of books and magazines I haven’t touched in years! A few months ago, I started the process by donating a ton of books and boxes of fabric to Ujamaas for their annual sale. But I still have a lot of coffee table style books that I don’t need to keep. So they went on piles on the table.

Once the bookcases were free, I huffed and puffed and pushed and shoved until I had them where I wanted them. It’s amazing how stubborn I can be! LOL I have to say, it’s difficult to let go of things sometimes. It brings back memories. I can remember when I purchased each piece of fabric (sometimes) and what I purchased it for. Projects for the children, Christmases gone, class samples, or just because I felt like it.

Long story short, I packaged and culled and moved and shoved and rearranged. And at the end of the afternoon, I decided I had done enough to get started and went to my upstairs studio and couldn’t resist pulling some fabrics out. That activity spilled onto Saturday and Sunday. I’m being brutal! I’m getting rid of a lot of fabric, scraps, ribbons, buttons, bobs and bits and bagging everything as I go along. Stuff gets priced right away. Studio sale coming up! Stay tuned …

I’ve decided to get rid of “it”, whatever “it” might be. If I need it in the future – well, then it’ll be time for a visit to the store, right? But I don’t want to keep everything “just in case”. I’m done with “just in case”. I’ve realized that all the STUFF is cluttering my mind and putting a weight on my shoulders that some days is hard to carry. I am hoping, no, I know, that adding clear and clean spaces to my studio will add clarity to my work. And what can be nicer than neatly folded fabrics in drawers? Right? I feel light already.

Now it’s time for me to go create a bit. I’ve been flitting from project to project and shiny thing to shiny thing. And of course, there’s a new project I’m hoping to get started. Yikes! Until I write again, keep creating, and maybe, just maybe, this will inspire you to go rearrange a drawer!

Stay happy!

Ana