It's Not Pretty, But It Works


Creative people can sometimes be resistant to doing things the normal way. As in, it's not enough to organize your piles of papers into common hanging file folders. You want to organize yourself in a beautiful way. But waiting to get organized until you can do it in a beautiful way can get in the way of knowing what's going on. Magazines like Where Women Create can set you up to have a skewed view of what it means to work and live. I don't make art so I can have a beautiful creative space. I have a functional space so I can make art. Needing to have the studio/office/whatever be beautiful gets in the way of function at times. As in, "Oh, I don't want to mess up that beautiful studio." Or, as in, "I want to file my papers in a beautiful way." Well, Dixie, being organized is beautiful, no matter how you do it.


So today I used insomnia for my own benefit and pulled out the hanging file folders and organized the foot high stack of papers on my desk. I did it in an imperfect way. There's nothing special about it. But what IS special is to be able to lay my hands on papers when I need them.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I purposefully don't buy that magazine Where Women Create for the same reason I won't buy a fashion mags. Not that the subject (art studios) is not of interest to me. It has to do with how I feel when I am done looking. You put it all so well.

Sorry to hear about the insomnia. Sounds like change is in the air for you too Dixie.

Dixie Redmond said...

I bought it once. It was beautiful! But it was like seeing a model in a couture gown - you wonder how they unload the dishwasher in that outfit, y'know? My painting area is very small, very functional and very non-photogenic.

Rachael Kinnison said...

I agree 150% Dix! I have never bought this magazine, because, well...I find it 'foofy'. I cant help but ask this ONE question as I have looked thru it in the Barnes & Noble bookstore "HOW do they actually MAKE anything in there???" ...I cannot imagine a space so clean with everything placed 'just so'....not that my studio is a heaping rats nest or anything~ but I have my piles of this and that, and it really gets messy when Im 'in the zone'. Im not ashamed of it at all, but it would never be 'foofy' enough for a magazine
Im thinking a new magazine is in order.....like 'Where the OTHER Women crate'
xoxoxo rachael

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

"Do not let what you cannot do
keep you from doing what you can do."

John Wooden