the plan...

so.

being a multidisciplinary artist has it advantages and disadvantages.

i love the freedom and ability to work in a variety of mediums and stretch myself in new ways. i love how work in one medium often informs my work in another. i love being able to do it all.

but, boy howdy...working the way i've been trying to work of late, is not working. at. all.

just take a look at my worktable right now:

there's a lot of stuff going on but not too much is getting accomplished because when i'm working on one thing, my eye catches sight of something else and  - wheeee! - there i go off on that tangent before the next thing catches my eye. it's been making me a bit c-r-a-z-y. true, some members of my family have a hard time telling i'm crazier than normal, but trust me...something's gotta change before they cart me off.

i think i'm more aware of what's not been working in my studio practice since mixed media artist and new friend lynn krawczyk of fibraartysta began sharing the ins and outs and whys and wherefores of decluttering and reorganizing her studio spaces on her blog in a series she's titled "reclaiming your spaces". (it's a great series with lots of good info, so head over there when you finish reading here.) 

now while the picture above might lead you to believe my whole studio looks like that, it doesn't. (well, not usually.) but what does look like that picture is my brain. so i've devised a plan to declutter and reorganize the inner workings of my noggin because it's not the space that's bugging me, it's the practice within the space.

anyway, one morning driving around doing errands and thinking about lynn and her undertaking, a lightbulb went off in my head. i realized that making sense of my practice might be pretty darn easy since there are three main areas i like to produce work in. and one that i've totally neglected the past few years and have missed a lot. that makes four things, right? and isn't it just swell and dandy that there are four weeks in most months? do you see where i'm going here? prepared to be amazed...

the plan 

1st week: quilted drawings and larger quilted works
2nd week: sculpture and sculptural jewelry
3rd week: works on paper (photography, digital work, printmaking, etc)
4th week: clothing/fabric design and personal sewing

cool, eh?

what i think will really help me by setting up the practice this way is that i can get just the materials out that i need to for that week's work. at the end of the week i clean it all up and get out the next week's materials. i'm sure there will be a bit of overlapping now and then, but i'm really going to try to keep that to a minimum. and with three etsy shops now, it means that i won't be listing work in each shop as frequently, but there will be more work to list when i do. at least i think so. and i'm really excited to have blocked out time to do some clothing design and sewing just for me.

it feels good to have an outline of how to spend my time. i haven't broken down each day of the week let alone the hours in the day - that's a bit much for me right now and i like that working a week at a time leaves it up to me to figure out how the hours in any given day will be filled. i'll need to wedge in blogging, paperwork, applications to shows, etc, but I'm thinking tackling one or two of those will work nicely as a way to wind up the day.

it pleases me how far i've come since i started my daily quilted drawing practice on 6 march 2012. but making a quilted drawing each day has, i realized, served it's purpose and i'm eternally grateful for the lessons it taught me. i'm not quitting it, but now i will pick it up when it's week rolls around - and i hope that the work will feel fresher and more exciting by giving it some space and time to breathe. i hope that for each week's work.

tomorrow's monday and the start of the second week of the month. guess what i'll be doing?

: : karen anne

and up soon: a post about some collabrative work i'm doing with the aforementioned lynn krawczyk!