Two Arms! My Plan to Defeat Clutter

“Once, several years ago, I was looking around for something and moved a piece of furniture only to behold behind it a fuzzy little ball of...what? I looked closer, which is always a bad idea, adn jumped back with a screech. Of course, it was a dead mouse. A dead mouse that had been there long enough that it looked a little--what?--petrified.

So I did what any normal person would do in a similar circumstance. I immediately, that very minute, sat down and wrote a story about it. I wrote and wrote until I was pleased with the dead mouse story. And then I used a piece of cardboard to lift and slide the little mouse corpse into a small white box--the kind you use for jewelry. After all, I reasoned, I had just written a story about him! It felt like something worse than abandonment to get rid of him now...we were linked! Connected through the sacred ritual of storytelling. And anyway, what if this story ended up, you know, famous? What if my dead mouse story ended up being my "The Lottery"? Wouldn't it be incredibly neat to still have the original thing that inspired it?

Yes, this is the way I think.

So you can see the situation is bad. I have at least one dead rodent that I have kept ON PURPOSE.”
― Eve O. Schaub

Being a night owl, I woke at one-thirty in the afternoon on March the twenty-seventh.  I felt rather well rested, how I always feel when I manage a full eight hours of uninterrupted, non-drug-induced sleep.  I ate a bowl of milk sodden trail mix with blueberries, decided that it held up fairly well from the night before, but that the dried bananas had got a bit soggy.  

After eating what amounts to post-noonday-breakfast, I went out into town in search of entertainment.  My husband drove, despite my protests, and the fact he had wrist surgery three days ago.  He also failed to take a dose of pain medication before we left the house.   

We stopped at a coffee shop and I got a tall glass of orange juice and spent some time drawing in a sketchbook.  My brother-in-law challenged me to create something out of some random lines he found on the internet, so I did that.  I created a desert landscape complete with orange rock monolith, cacti and blue sky.  It turned out well, for chicken scratch.  "A child could have drawn this," I complained to my brother-in-law.  

"A talented child," he replied.  "A child with artistic ability.  Definitely not me."

We took my brother-in-law home and retrieved our garage door opener that we'd forgotten in his car yesterday.  Then we started for home.  My husband promised to take me to a thrift shop a couple days ago, and today he doggedly refused to postpone it further, even though I could tell his hand was starting to hurt.  So I went in and hurriedly bought a few handmade clay vases.  I found four of them in my preferred color scheme.  This surprised me.  A couple had small chips which I expect I can repair, although my best friend suggested that I do what some folks do and paint the chipped areas gold or some other metallic color.  Apparently in some cultures it is a symbolic nod to broken things still having worth and still being beautiful.  I love this notion and intend to put it into practice.  Not sure if I will use gold paint, or some other metallic color.  I think I'll mask off the wounds in the clay and spray paint them with whatever color I end up settling on.

We had dinner together.  I made a pasta salad and served it with asparagus and avocado-tomato toast.  It was delicious.  I have not cooked much recently.  I lack inspiration.  While we ate dinner we watched fail videos on the television.

After dinner, the men-folk went to the office to play video games, so I went out to my sanctuary and painted an artist trading card.  I painted a miniature fall scene around a babbling brook.  It turned out better than I expected it would.   I rate it eight out of ten stars on my personal rating scale.  I am not fond of the way acrylic snags on the prepared surface.  I've been preparing the playing cards with acrylic gesso, but the surface feels very rough.  I think I will take the remaining cards and cover them with modpodge before I paint them.  Modpodge gives the card a smoother feel and might help make the paint flow a bit more smoothly over the surface.  I want my finished pieces to have a smooth, silky finish.  The fall scene I ended up with looked a bit harsh with a lot of sharp lines.  It is pretty, but it isn't velvety.   Up close, it looks rough, and I'm going for that soft, light, foggy feel.

After I finished painting, I came inside to work out.  Did a bit of rowing and completed my daily exercise routine.  While I exercised, I watched a video on the television.  In the video, the artist shows her squalid art space, and then provides periodic updates as she moves it to another area.  I started feeling a bit nauseated because she carries her camera with her and talks into it.  I also started having a small panic attack because she had so much stuff in piles everywhere.  I ended up having to turn it off before finishing because it was overwhelming me.

I went out to my sanctuary, turned on the twinkle lights and curled up with a blanket in front of the fireplace until I felt calm again.  I realized in that moment that it would be quite easy for my art supplies to envelope and paralyze me, effectively shutting me off from creating.  I've decided that no matter how beautiful I might find them, I will never be able to create a pretty art space where the supplies are displayed on shelves and tables.  Even the prettiest studios that I found on instagram still overwhelmed me a little bit, because there's so much visual stimulation, and I know for a fact I couldn't keep it looking that neat.  If I am to create, and survive myself, I need to contain it.  

Luckily I've been coming to this realization over the course of several weeks, so I am fortunate that I bought and built a desk that contains six large sets of white drawers in which I can hide art supplies. I'm going to do everything in my power to make the stuff I use to create art invisible.  Eventually I might not even need an easel.   This may not happen though, since I still enjoy painting volcanos.   I am not ready to retire this hobby.  The easel doesn't really bother me though.  It's all the little stuff on shelves that just rubs on my nerves when I have to look at it.  Even my art irritates me sometimes because it is colorful.  Which is why I've started keeping art journals.  I can close up the book and hide whatever I created inside of it.

So this is my goal for twenty-twenty-two:  Hide my stuff.  I want to so successfully have hidden my art supplies, that there will actually be space in my art room that I can use to make the space feel cozy.  Shelves on which I can put plants, a place to curl up and read a book or sleep, and restful vibes.