Solitude and a Room of One's Own

Who knew better than Virginia?  Personal space is so very important.  We will be moving shortly into a house of our own, within which I will have a room of my own.  I've always had a room to work in, but it has always been shared with storage and extra furniture, our library, and so forth because always in the past our home has been too small.  In my past life I had a larger house which I called the library, I didn't feel any need for art space then.  But everyone else in the house would clean the living room by dumping the excess into my room. 

Currently, in my new life, our two bedroom condo/townhouse/duplex/apartment has very little room and very little storage.  My wingspan is far too wide for this and I look forward to moving into the house we are purchasing.  The room you see in the photo above is to be my art room.  It has everything I could dream of, a large walk-in closet, a window seat, some built in shelves and space for tables and chairs and whatever else I need. 

My current "room of shame" has had every possible enhancement to help straighten it out, and the perimeter of it is quite nicely organized, but the remaining 7X7 space is a veritable sea of crap.  Boxes of collageables, paper cutter, unshelved books and magazines, art supplies and more art supplies.  In order to find one thing, three more must be moved.  This detritus will fit nicely into the closet of the room pictured above.  It is a dream come true. 

Solitude is quite another thing.  While I have quite an independent streak (noted early on in a report card, "M is sometimes too independent").  I should probably blow that up on a copier and frame it.  But Gryphon and I are very close.  We spend most of our time together.  I thought early on in our relationship that I would feel smothered by that, remembering being a mother of three and sometimes feeling like an anthill.  I remember one time trying to put on my makeup in the bathroom and being joined methodically by every single family member until I blew my cool and ordered them all out.  But I don't feel that way now. 

I still crave solitude, but I do find it here and there and it is wonderful.  Mostly I just crave room enough to move around in.  I have a recurring dream, a house dream, in which at one point I enter a sunny room, empty of furnishings with a golden oak floor and I turn to my young daughters and tell them, "this is the room for dancing". 

Eye Candy

I've been rather taken with the painting "The Nightmare" for quite some time.  And I like to watch every Clive Owen movie and television series available.  So when the above image turned up on the series "Second Sight"  I just about went squirrely trying to find it online, it was my screensaver for quite awhile.  So I am being rather a pixie by posting it.  Everyone (like all 2 or 3 of you) reading my blog has requested more eye candy, so I am going back through my posts and adding it.  Not more photos of Clive Owen, but photos from my journals. 

I've done quite a few journal pages lately.  I've gotten a bit more experimental.  I thought I would lighten things up a bit by doing a pink journal.  Amazing how dark one can get with a bright pink page.  I have an obsession with black and white photos on my pages.  The starkness appeals to me.  It gives me focus on what the image is saying to me.  I like the drama, the contrast.  I use b&w photography magazines for most of the images although lately fashion magazines have been using more of them. 

5 Card Stud

These are images of a set of tarot cards I made for my former muse, prior to Ianto.  There is an
entry earlier in my blog about that.  I enjoyed making these, they are on silver cardstock and there is a common pattern on the backs.  But each grouping of  cards has a different theme of sorts.  The point of them as a gift was encouraging him to stop smoking. 

Cannot be moved

I have tried to move the entry from December 12 that I mistakenly put on the wrong blog. Copying does not seem to work. It was about a project I started on the balcony trying some experimental dying of books. When I begain it refused to rain for well over a week. There was enough moisture in the air however to have some effect. Since then, it has rained plenty and snowed and frozen a couple of times. I will attempt to get them out to dry without turning the deck blackish purple. Then perhaps I will put some other papers in the "bath" to see what effect it all has. I used some powdered dye and some craft paint and some ink.

Meanwhile I bought a heavily discounted copy of Mapping the World, which is as large as any world atlas, but bound on the short side making the pages very wide. I've removed every third page to reduce weight, it is still too heavy. And I've gone onto Juliana Coles Etsy site and ordered her retreat booklet for the Altered Atlas.

I'm happy to see 2010 arrive under a blue moon. I hope that is auspicious. I would love a year of good solid creativity and the joy it always brings me. I always have a tendency to do too much or attempt to do too much, but I am not going to flagellate myself over that. Some things may be set aside for a time, but time is just an illusion, is it not? While the last year has been a difficult one in so many ways, it has also been a revelation. The past decade, the Aughties, has been as full of joy and pleasure just as deeply as the pain and loss. I am certain that every limit that I will now experience will be the catalyst for something new and wondrous.