Cocooning

It’s been a while since I’ve posted…you might be thinking that New York has swallowed me whole.

Not to worry.

Even though it does feel as though I’ve been scooped up and held in the mouth of the beast, I haven’t been chewed up…yet, and, fingers crossed, I won’t be spit out.

In the month since you’ve last heard from me I’ve been an extremely busy little caterpillar, working hard behind closed doors to create this, my new studio located at Reis Studios, Long Island City, NY.:

The south wall of my studio, currently home to 3 of my new storage tables and a selection of pieces from the Survival Games series.

The space is lovely: 230 sf’, 12′ ceiling height, and a west-facing wall of glass block/window that lets in the most amazing diffused light (a bit hard to tell from these photos, as the light from the window is messing with my iPhone camera’s light meter).  Through the window I have a peek-a-boo view of downtown Manhattan.  Most importantly, the space FEELS right.

The north wall of my studio: my drawing storage table and a variety of miscellany waiting patiently for additional shelving to arrive.

I took possession on September 1st, had cut plywood panels delivered from Home Depot on September 2nd, and officially moved into the space on September 5th.

During the past four weeks I’ve built and sealed four tables, unpacked all of my studio boxes, and got a jump on organizing my supplies.

A better view of one of the storage tables. Each 5′ table holds 9 storage bins. You can see I have left the masking tape labels on (put on to list bin inventory for the moving company) – I still haven’t memorized where everything is yet!

I won’t lie, it looks pretty good right now, but there was a moment or two in the first couple of weeks where it felt like I was NEVER going to pull it together.  I had nightmares featuring huge stacks of bins surrounding abandoned carcasses of failed studio tables.

With perseverance – and the help of my personal engineer, Andrew – table completion prevailed (Lesson Learned: it was a challenge to try building the tables all on my own.  I would have done better to call in reinforcements earlier than I did).

My free, recycled love-seat. It cleaned up nicely, and all it needs to make it the ideal, cozy, curl-up-with-an-art-book lounger is an additional seat cushion and a few throw pillows.  It has this awesome storage nook in the seat, I’m still trying to decide what I should squirrel away in there.

In it’s current state, the studio is imperfectly perfect; there are still books, office equipment, and supplies that wouldn’t fit in the tables crowding areas of the floor.  It’s nothing that a few shelving units and a couple more days of organization can’t remedy.

For now, though, I’m able to come into the studio and work in the space instead of working on the space.

Imperfectly perfect feels like a very good place to be. 🙂

How is your life imperfectly perfect right now?  Please feel welcome to share in the comments below.