A Room Aflame

There's been a designated studio area in my home forever, and long before I began to sell my work.

My first one was in an attic and it was haunted! (But that's another story....) And then there was the pink studio that was the hub of the house, and the shadowy wood-paneled one tucked into a dark corner of a dining room, and the chilly blue basement hideaway that I simply avoided. Then there was the bright yellow bedroom with the south-facing window. All day long the room was on FIRE. I loved it.

Those studios were like nesting boxes. As my work became more varied and I began to show and sell it, I needed a bigger space to be creative. So when my daughters both left home and the second largest bedroom in my current house became free, I took it over. And that's where my studio is now.

When I moved into it, the walls were blue and the ceiling was crowded with glow-in-the-dark stars. It'd been my youngest's bedroom for years; I'd once stood on a ladder and affixed every one of those stars to the ceiling myself as a surprise for her. So the room came pre-loaded with happy memories.

And in addition to its size, I liked this room because it had windows that faced both north and east. They were 'eyebrow' windows (my word for them) -- little things up close to the ceiling that I couldn't look out of unless I was standing on a chair. And this was a good thing insomuch as it prevented me from gazing out at the world all day when I should be drawing. Looking up at them and seeing nothing but treetops made me feel like a bird in a nest.

Nothing about it's changed since then, but in recent years the room has felt oppressive. Doesn't help, I'm sure, that I've simply spread out in it. The place is a mess....

The room needs a big old overhaul. My art does, too. On New Year's Eve I put it all out there for the Universe to see and think about -- wrote it down and everything! -- and I'll be darned if It didn't hear me. And I know this because I've been dreaming of rooms that are bare and rooms that are burning, and I'm interpreting them as signs that I need to plan for serious organization. And that I need to recreate that Room Aflame.

So a week ago I took measurements and paged through catalogs and studied shelving units and thought about Color.

And I've decided to bring back the fire.
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