Studio Love

My studio is one of my most favorite places. It's mine. It's what I've dreamed of having ever since I touched clay. It lies underneath my house, mostly in the back 25% of the space, and consists of a couple small windows, two gate doors to the carport, a wooden landing that leads to a bedroom sized room and lots of dirt flooring.

I use it almost daily and that means things get muddy, out of place, used up, dinged and just dirty. I clean up after myself and do some mopping on Fridays but just like any space, it is good to dedicate time on simply improving it and refreshing it.

Saturday morning I made a list of all the things I would love to happen in my studio, from cleaning to adding items to rearranging. I didn't even plan on taking on the list in it's entirety that very day but Jon was at work and I had the morning to do whatever I pleased so I headed to our resale home supply shop and began my treasure hunt.

I spent $11 at the resale shop and then grabbed a new bucket and another small item at Home Depot and spent about $9 there.

So, home I went with my goodies, grabbed my sister and we headed downstairs. After lots of mopping, putting away, and washing, we finally started using some power tools. First, we moved the stereo from a small shelf on the floor to a shelf purchased at the resale shop for $1.75 that we mounted above my wedging table. It opened up prime floor space and made my music come from over head, which just sounds better than coming from the floor. I also went through all my CDs and trashed the old, scratched ones, tossed Leanne Rimes and some others in the give away stack and threw away all the cases for CDs that have long been in possession of my high school best friend, Lacey. (And yes, I have all her missing ones here.)

So next,  I stacked the little shelf I used for the stereo onto it's mate and made a 4 shelf piece. Then my sweet husband unboxed and loaded clay on it. I like to keep at least 500 lbs on hand at all times. I have around 700 lbs now so that means 28 bags of clay to line up. And since I bounce from clay to clay, we sorted it by type and labeled it. Writing with a sharpie on plastic is one of my small joys in life so I greatly enjoyed this part while Jon greatly enjoyed the heavy lifting. And this shelf does not support 700lbs of clay so there is clay lined up on the floor too. To offset the weight, I added my towels and tub of plastic wrap. Cost, $0

After this, I set up a new spot for my wheel. I have been needing more shelf access where I throw to reduce the amount of times I stand up while I work. I can make anywhere from 5 to 20 items per hour depending on what I am throwing. Multiply that by a full day of heavy wheel throwing and adequate space access for bats and boards is essential. It is really annoying to have to stand up between each pot (which in my previous arrangement I pretty much had to as my portable cart filled up after 6 items.) I turned my ware shelf perpendicular to the wall to make a barrier between the space for the wheel and the clay shelf area- almost making that area somewhat of a storage space (in my mind at least). And then I placed my wheel beside the shelf. I want to add a wedging table for white clay on the other side of the wheel so I can just wedge, turn around and create.

My big success at the resale shop was finding a peg board. This year my collection of tools has grown greatly and I've not caught up in the organizational area (I can't tell you how often I look for a pen or scissors). Peg boards are an awesome answer to this issue and I found one for $3. And, it is white which I love. I'm obsessed with white these days and you will start to see this coming out in my pots. I picked up the pegs for $2.68 at Home Depot and hung the board just to the right of my wheel's new location. That way I am close in proximity to it, can see all my tools, but still lean back against the wall without getting pegged in the head. Yet, I'm still getting used to this. I searched for my scissors a long time yesterday before remembering to check the peg board.

The last small thing I did was repurpose the small book shelf. I previously had been using it for clay storage but since I repurposed the stereo shelf for that, I had a spare book case. So, I moved it next to my red clay wedging table and lined up my slips, scale, banding wheel, slip trailer, magic water, etc, etc. on it. All this plus the peg board left my largest shelf mostly empty. I'm still not sure what to do with it. My original thought was it would be for finished work. But it is too dusty downstairs to store finished pretties in there. And the room shakes too much  to risk them jostling around as I slam clay around. So, it has just been catching junk. My inkling is to make it sort of a challenge. I will face it when I sit at the wheel and my challenge is to fill the shelf space with my work. Not in a hurried way, but in a motivating way. Fill me with good, loved, beautiful work it will say. And I will work to do it.

I'm not usually so cost fixated but I actually surprised myself at how little it cost to do major changes in my little space. So, I wanted to celebrate that a little to remind myself in the future that it doesn't take much, just a little TLC and the weekend to spruce up a place.

My teacher at Haystack, Sarah Jaegger, told us all that you can make beautiful work in less than ideal work situations. So, with that, I'm thankful for my basement studio, it's piecemealed floors, it's vines that I get to yank out, it's soft spots in the floor, and red red dirt that covers everything from head to toe. It is mine and allows me to be me. And that's all I need to create.

Love, Lisa

A couple things in the works... upside down to help dry them evenly

And a cross stitch from my mom, my encourager of all things creative :)