all photos in this post are taken around my various workspaces this morning, at my Italian Arthouse: documenting the improved, partially-contained chaos!
I've been writing and podcasting around this subject for many years - (if you haven't heard my podcast, do drop by The Art Of Life by Clare. on Spotify For Podcasters or Fountain App) - and working as a free-minded creative for decades, moving around the world as the spirit called me - but still, every time a new phase of art-work begins, I am forced to think of my workspace in a whole new way. How inconvenient!!I thought that if I owned my own home, that everything woiuld be shiny and perfect forever without any effort BUT being the sole responsabile being for a house - particularly of a living, breathing medieval abode - needs creative skills to adapt and change the space as one's life evolves. And I don't mean choosing new wallpaper or carpets from Ikea periodically!
Particularly these past dynamic years of change and spiritual growth, it has been like trying to lasso an excited puppy, making my space to make. New perspective on my co-creative career, my relationship with audience, the tech I'm using, disappearing and reappearing on social media - would the world just stop rocking and rolling and let me get off onto solid ground, pleeeeeaaaaase! - new materials flooding in, old papers being thrown out, clients popping up unexpectedly, new jobs taking up space spontaneously, electricity being disconnected... much in flux, little structure... until eventually the weight of the disorganisation began to lay too heavy.
For the past 6 months or so, I've been trying to tidy my workspace. What workspace?? What am I even working on??? Am I going to paint again or should I put my colours away more long-term somewhere? Where can my easels and palettes be stored? Am I fully committed to being a needlework artist rather than my long career of painting...?! How many clothes are too many, if my new palette and colours is in fabric and thread instead of vernice?? If I have so much to learn, how can I make this a living, sewing? And if there is such a long and steep road to mastery, is it worth me putting a specific work site aside for it?? Maybe it'll work better if I sew at the kitchen table - but then the machine has to be in sunlight and the rest must be hand-sewn... Moving sacks of fabrics from room to room, half-worked-on garments from table to desk to worktable... Finding multiples of tools or threads, because they've been left out somewhere and I haven't taken stock of my supplies... Feeling like I'm selfish and wasteful to be indulging this fantasy so, naive and incompetent and never improving.... This churns around in my field for weeks and weeks, eventually snapping!
Eventually I start recognising that I AM actually capable of learning, growing and finding a whole new outlet of expression: it is evident daily in the new clothing choices that I now have, the neighbours approaching me with sewing jobs, and the donations flooding in - though it takes me a while to actually find the thread of my passion in all that is unfolding, finally it begins to settle - an excited child with her first serious paintbox again.
As I have relearned these months, it is so easy to get super-anal about creating a making-space: we are so removed from our full force of expression - that with which we were conceived, though unlikely born - and the undoing of a lifetime of negative impact against our volcanic natural force of Divine Co-Creation is not for the faint-hearted. I've been doing this peeling away of the layers of limitation for all my years, and still feel like there's a ton more to do! So we have to begin with our imperfect perfection; our over-planning, our uber-consuming, our trying to find the right instruments to facilitate our Art.. If we can start taking ONE bite-sized piece; start finding a tentative balance between the areas we're working in, trying out different parts of our home, tables or chairs or sofas or beds... so long as we keep moving forward, the path will become clearer as we go. Just a few days after 'snapping', my house is more orderly and harmonious than it has ever been!
Our belief that 'if I just got this one tool, colour, fabric, thread, pair of scissors, desk, cup of coffee... THEN I'll be able to create something meaningful' - is another version of the rat running around in a maze; just round this corner is something better, just over that hill, just a bit further... We undoubtedly require the minimum of structures, tools, materials to play and make with, but our mind needs to be a creative void, which allows the visibility of a vision.
Getting back to practicalities: I have to accept that in the past I've worked better in a crisis: I find it easier to make order out of chaos, than to create from order. This is a key aspect of my character and lifestyle. It doesn't mean that I want to live in a guddle always, but I was always thriving on a certain level of stirring things up, accumulating improvisedly, allowing in unexpected gifts and experiences, and letting this all amalgamate into..... something that I then tease into being. I am not grasping at the finished piece, neither am I trying to hard to contain it. It is coming 'by itself', and this is a very particular feeling of holistic involvement in something bigger than my small self. HOWEVER my creative expression, my career AND my spiritual growth have most assuredly been held back to some degree by my 'inability' to put things into order and keep them that way!
My creativity needs a container: a safe quite home, ambient sounds, a full belly, no jarring interruptions, fresh air, the right temperature.... and a clear worktable. In my earlier creative years, my mind and space were rarely the perfect refuge, and so my artwork was full of angst and 'old' vibes, and my sewing projects were often left barely-begun. It took an immense effort to find the better container, my Arthouse and La Dolce Vita, to step out of the neuroses which were cluttering my way to making a space to make. I could see the neuroses, lingering still after all the decades, in my piles of bags and chaotic corners of the house, in the kitchen table heavily-layered with bits-and-pieces that were not being attended to, and in my nervous system churning even at night whilst I slept: the world around us is always a fairly clear illustration of our creative mastery!
All the same, I love how these ebbs and flows come in our creative practise; they come like tides and like seasons - all the elements combined to make something new - a new phase and new organisation is required - and we can allow ourselves to be led by circumstance, to a better place. Just as nature moves up and outwards in spring, down and inwards in autumn-winter, we should allow more introvert and more extrovert times to unfold as they naturally want to occur.
Yesterday I spent an entire day (plus preparatory work harvesting bamboo the days before) restructuring most of my clothing and fabrics. I took down the old bamboo poles which were positioned along the wall and had some messy clothes hanging from, and I put up a more 3D structure, which allowed more clothing to be hung, and easier access to them. It's not SO different to how it was structured before, but demanded a great deal more constructing, and does give a significant better layering of garments on the wall. More visibility - plus, as I rearranged the room again, I was able to somewhat take stock of what I have. This lets me put things in clusters of same fabric, colour, texture, type of garment, details - and it allows to be fresh in my mind, what might go with what.
This is a vital part of the creative unfolding: not a formal stock-take as part of a fabrication process, but a relaxed reappraisal of what I have in my hands, in my studio, that can be played with - like remembering what colours I have to paint with. Rummaging in secondhand clothing is one of my most very favourite immersions to have! Even when I already know what I'm looking at, re-rummaging is a delightful habit, which reminds me that I am rich and that I can make anything!
So perhaps this is the moral of this post; realising that we have everything that we need to make marvellous things. The organisation is a part of it, but only to keep the ideas and enthusiasm moving, fresh, alive. Structure in an of itself will not make us creative, and so a 'professional' workspace is not for everyone. Equally, chaos needs SOME kind of a taproot to ground our vital force in this place and time; we need an anchor in order to be able to not be just bobbing about endlessly!
I love this new cleanness of my studio (and bedroom!!). It gives me great joy in the morning, to wake up and see tidy piles and an open table - like a fresh canvas. My projects are lining up, and I will be embarking on various completions now.
All power to us in our creative process! I hope your making space is divinely right for you, and would love to hear about your adventures in making a space to make.
