In the Studio

I come here to paint, write, work with cloth, make books, sit with the dogs, stare out the window, move things around, abandon things, begin again.
Some days I make something. Some days I don't.
The studio has never been only a place where I work. It is where I go to be with whatever is moving through my life before I necessarily know what it is.

I rarely come into the studio with a plan for how the day will unfold.

I may have an idea of what I want to work on, but once I begin, something else often takes over. A color changes where a painting is going. A piece of cloth catches my attention. Something unfinished starts calling to me again.

I follow those things.

I've spent enough of my life trying to know where I was going before I began. In here, I don't have to.

I can begin with what is in front of me and see where it leads.

THIS IS HOW I WORK

THE WORK MOVES BETWEEN FORMS

I might spend part of a day painting and then find myself at another table cutting cloth.

For a long time, I thought of these as different kinds of work. Now one seems to lead naturally into another.

A color or image may find its way into cloth. A piece of fabric may lead me somewhere I hadn't expected. Scraps left on the table sometimes become the beginning of something else.

I follow where the work takes me.

SOMETIMES THE WORK GETS VERY SMALL

There are times when all I want is a needle, a piece of cloth, and my hands.

Nothing elaborate. Nothing that needs to become anything in particular.

Just the quiet act of putting one stitch after another.

Sometimes that's enough.

THIS IS ALSO WHERE I LIVE

The studio isn't only where I come to work.

I come here when I need quiet. I read here. I write here. I sit with the dogs. Sometimes I make something, and sometimes I don't.

There have been times when this room has held me through parts of my life I didn't know how to move through.

The paintings and cloth are part of it, but so are the ordinary hours when nothing is being made.

The studio isn't separate from my life. It is one of the places where I live it.