In college, studio space was always at a premium, and that's putting it lightly. The reality: one big room to work in, plus a smaller room for storage of paintings and chemicals, struggled to accommodate around 30 upper-level studio students as well as maybe 40+ intro to painting students (according to my somewhat conservative estimates). It was a mess. I feel like work consistently got damaged in the storage room because there wasn't enough space to store half of what needed to go in there, and space constraints pressured us to create paintings that were portable at every stage of the process.

As an upperclassman producing very large (i.e. taller than myself) paintings and spending up to 18 hours per week in that room, I felt some entitlement to my own space. Along with the one other woman making huge paintings at that time, I left my work out in a corner of the studio. This area grew to include with my palette, paints, and lots of sketches and notes tacked up to the wall. Months later we were admonished and forced to end our “homesteading” in the corners of the room because, hey, what would happen if everyone did that? What a buzzkill, what a serious drag on the creative process. The art building has been gutted and remodeled since I graduated, so I hope students are now given adequate space to work.

As I said on Monday, work space is crucial. So, now that I have a place to call my own, it's time to start homesteading again!

After making a handy drawing of the planned studio/work area, I calculated that I'll have 22 feet of hangable wall space. Plus, even though the house is only 14 feet wide, looking at the drawing I realize there is a lot of floor space to be had as well. I guess all the junk sort of covers it up at this point, but hey, it has a lot more potential than that little corner of the painting studio!