For the last nearly nine years of running SunnyRising I ruled my space with a statement that has turned out to be wildly untrue:
"If the outside is messy, the inside is messy, too"
.
If the space is a mess, so is the brain of the maker.
Here I am, knee deep in what appears to be clutter and chaos and I am thriving.
THRIVING.
The total tidiness myth was a prison.
Though clean single-purpose surfaces are something I don't feel like I can ever give up (hygienic packaging table, frequently swept floors)
I have let everything else be what it is right now.
Metal forms abound.
Cabbed rocks spill out of drawers.
Abundance is alive.
If it eventually smothers something important
then there'll be time to
make it better.
I don't put everything away when I'm done using it.
This means I don't have to get it out again when I use it tomorrow.
.
For almost nine years
I have thought an artist needed a beautiful space
to make beautiful things.
In order to appeal to that part of myself that still believes, I have built a spaceship (thanks, Robin)
of beauty and relative order
and from the cockpit I can look upon the vastness of the shop
and feel both the safety of my vessel and the spaciousness of
what's possible.
It's working.
I'm working.
He's working.
I am learning that it doesn't have to be precious.
I am getting the hang of letting things hang.
I am blowing raspberries at my Perfectionist and hoping
that she'll see the humor in my heart
and the lightness in my step
That everything is saying, "Come along!"
with a sweep of the arm
and a dirt-smudged cheek.
.
xoxo,
Sunny
4 comments:
"I am getting the hang of letting things hang."
this is awesome
it is hard to let these kinds of ideals go...
but it is these very ideals that can keep us from really living big and beautifully
I have said it many times
and I will say it again
you
are
awesome
love and light my sister friend
you are living large ♥
Oh Honey! You should see my workspace!.... I will share a dirty little secret with you, I cannot stand seeing all the spit shined artsy perfect workspaces all over the Internet!.....great branding, but it doesn't feel ' real'.....besides, think of how many pairs of earrings you could finish during the time you are cleaning up! Oxoxox
I, too, am in the process of moving all of my work from the small space it is now into half of the shop space my husband has in his garage/workshop and I'm loving it. Wide windows, lots of sunshine, and (most of all) sharing the presence of other much-loved and precious worker, my DH. I think we take too much time on Pinterest and other sites looking at and longing for the studios of others. Studios that may be staged or created with much more time and money than we have and that longing just empties me of satisfaction with what I already have. It's the same prison. Whatever it is, it's a waste of time, that longing thing but I've been in that same prison you are busting' out of.
Now broken free, we are! Grateful. Freedom. (It's a day to play a little Ritchie Havens.)
:: lynn
Welcome to my world!!! LOL. Actually- for me- the pendulum had to swing in the opposite direction. I had to get my tidy on- which, by Alison standards still isn't very tidy- before I could land somewhere in the middle, a little less Pig Pen but still a happy enough level of chaos for my brain to feel at ease. LOVE your musings, my friend. You are funny and insightful as hell.
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