This Amazing Flow

There's this amazing energy in the studio right now. I feel like it's a combination of the spring light that floods the space through the large industrial windows and from recently having people visit during open studios. It's hard to capture in words... but it's there. The kind of energy that lends itself to this amazing flow.

Started working on a new piece this week, which means culling for materials has begun. Working with deep, rich blues and because I have never used this color predominately in any of my work before, it's like starting from scratch.

My greatest challenge right now is that none of my books have what I'm looking for and believe me, I have a lot of books in my studio. I'm only about half-way through them so there's still hope, but I have a feeling I will be relying more heavily on album covers for this piece.

With that said, decided to hit my favorite local Salvation Army Store in Yonkers on the way into the studio this weekend, but I couldn't access the place. There was a carnival in the large parking lot across the street, so finding parking was next to impossible.

Showed up back at the studio empty handed but was able to start work with the pages I had pulled a couple days ago. After reassessing I might just have enough material after all to get this new piece done. Will try and post an image of the work in progress in the next few days.

Holding On To Things

This weekend will be my 3rd time participating in the annual open studios event at my building and I'm excited to have the chance again to open my doors to the public. I really enjoy the interaction with visitors and it's such a great opportunity to share what I have been working on recently.

Last year I started actually working during opening studios and this proved to be a great strategy, at least for me. Not only does it give me something to focus on throughout the day, it's a great platform to talk about my work. It also provides guests an opportunity to see my artistic process up close and how I go about constructing my collages.

In the middle of preparing for this event I'm also relocating all of my older work, that has been in storage elsewhere, into my studio. As each piece comes in I'm faced with the decision to keep it or let it go... never an easy choice because everything I have created has meaning behind it and in someway has influenced my work today.

Do I really need that sketch though I did of a still life back in undergrad? Do I really need to keep that original woodcut block I used back in 1998 for a print? I strongly believe that letting go of things that no longer serve a purpose in our lives opens up the way for something new to come in. If something no longer holds value, it's time to let it go.

Between the purging of old work and cleaning my studio for this upcoming weekend, the energy has shifted in my working space significantly. I'm excited to see how all of this influences my creative process moving forward!