It occurs to me that I’m soon going to have an explosion of chaos in my life if I don’t start getting organized on the art thing. I can’t tell you how many little tiny pictures I’ve cut out, how many pages I’ve torn out of magazines, how many bits and pieces are starting to multiply on my table and spill over onto the floor. I’ve also been accumulating paints and pencils and paper and gel medium and gesso and brushes and tools. There’s almost no room left on the table for actually creating art. There are piles on the floor too. I’ve made all this mess and I’ve only been an artist for a couple of weeks.
It seems the de-cluttering stage of my life has given way to yet another accumulating stage. I’ve stopped throwing things out. I’m starting to pick things up off the sidewalk and bring them home. I’m grabbing magazines out of other people’s black boxes and piling them on my floor. I think of junk mail as ephemera now. I love ephemera. I look at everything with an eye to its creative potential. “This might be just the thing I need someday,” I tell myself as I tuck away the Rogers flyer for a rainy day. It’s not even a nice flyer. Deep in my heart of hearts, I know I will never use it for anything. I will probably throw it away in fifteen years.
I’m very lucky to have a room I can dedicate to art. It’s a small room, but it’s a dedicated room. Yet I know if I just keep doing what I’m doing, this room is soon going to get overwhelmed by all the bits of art-to-be. I think I should get organized now, while it’s still possible. Before it’s too late.
Apart from the impending chaos, there’s also the issue of having too many unfinished projects right in front of me at the same time while I’m trying to work on something. It’s distracting. Even worse, I end up getting glue and paint on the projects I’m not even working on, because they’re encroaching into my workspace. I’m kind of messy, especially with the glue.
I figure the main categories of things that I need to organize are:
- materials (eg glues, paints, paper, canvasses, etc)
- tools (breyer, paintbrushes, scissors, utility knives, etc)
- images (magazine cut-outs, photocopies, printouts, photographs, etc.)
- image sources (magazines, books, etc.)
- works-in-progress. I definitely need somewhere to put the works-in-progress so they’ll be safely out of the way
- miscellaneous (bits of jewelry, coins, keys, and other small three-dimensional objects I’ve been squirreling away in the hope that I might someday transform them into art)
The room has a closet, and the closet has some shelves. That’s a good start. But it’s not enough. I’m not sure what I need. More shelves? Something with drawers? Shoeboxes? A filing cabinet?
Here’s a handy tip I picked up on e-how.
“Hang nylon organizers with clear vinyl pockets. Some have small pockets only for paint tubes, while others add larger pockets for brushes, pens and sketch pads. Designed to hook over a doorframe, they can also hang on a wall hook near your easel. An added advantage: They’re easy to hide in a closet if the room has to serve other functions.”
If anybody has any other tips for me, I’d love to hear them.
I think a little chaos might be good for art. At least you have a whole room for it so you don’t have to make art on the kitchen table!
I have similar issues and so I am anxious to see how you deal with yours.
This is completely off-topic, but the person who moved into your old apartment still has his/her Christmas tree up. With lights. That she/he turns on in the evening.
I think I have the beginning of a plan: I’m going to switch the computer room and the art studio. That way the art studio gets the bigger room AND more natural sunlight. I’ll still need to add shelves or a cabinet or something, but it’s a start.
Michelle, that’s interesting news. I believe the people who moved into my old apartment were the two women who lived next door to me there (#27, top floor). They got approved for a transfer from CCOC, but then they had concerns that my place was too small for them. I’m surprised to learn they’ve found room for a permanent Christmas tree.
Chaos may be excellent for art, but I’m not convinced that chaos and clutter are the same thing.
My one tip is to *not* keep the image sources, i.e. magazines. They’re big and slippery and you’re probably not going to use 90% of what’s in them.
DO NOT pick up a magazine unless you have the time to flip through it and tear the good stuff out within the week. And promise yourself that you will throw the magazine out if you have not looked through it in a week. There will always be other magazines.
Get a filing cabinet (or better yet, I have an IKEA hanging file thing in my basement that I’d be more than happy to give you). Then when you go through the magazines, you can file the pictures you tear out according to subject. Or size, or colour, or whatever systems suits your art best.
You also don’t seem to have much on your walls. Could you put up shallow shelves and display the paints like art?
Could you put nails in the walls for the paint brushes and arrange them artfully?
Can you hang the unfinished projects on the walls? Or put up little plate railing s to lean them against the walls?
I would probably have very many other ideas, but I’ll just leave you with that.
Megan, you’re sizzling with brilliant ideas! I love the concept of displaying the tools and materials as art, because many of them are quite appealing, and I’m always visually drawn to collections of things.
Thank you very much for the ideas and also for the offer of the hanging file thing from Ikea. I just might take you up on that! (I’ll email you.)
Scan the images to compress space to digital. (sez I who will get to this stage herself at some point real soon, probably)
And I hear an Ikea trip possibility dinging….