I know lots of people who function brilliantly within a chaotic studio. I’m just not one of them. I need spareness but… I’m no neatnik (!) so order doesn’t come naturally to me. It’s an ongoing effort. A big effort. But the feeling of spaciousness it opens up inside is narcotic bliss.
Mary Ann Moss
This is my desk, without gloss added. Just straight up, with cat hairs and sunbeams floating all around. No interior design magazine styling or blog photo prettying up. Nada.
I would love to keep it clean(er), and have a fresh table each morning. But that ain’t happening without me making an effort. Sometimes I try, and it lasts for two days perhaps. I love the the feeling of spaciousness of a clean desk/home, and the narcotic bliss it provides. But like any fix, it doesn’t last long… ;-)
And it looks a lot worse than Kim’s no gloss desk (who inspired this post) or Carina’s rather tidy one… You can actually see their tables! But I guess that just means I win in the who has the messiest desk ever-game?
But I’m good at the disappearing desk trick, as you all might know by now.
By the way. I took these photos when I was cat sitting, so the cat isn’t there right now, and I miss him. But otherwise this messy table is the same. Just new materials floating in and around, always changing but seldom all cleared at the same time…
One thing I do love is having planned guests coming over. Knowing people are coming totally help me and gives me enough energy to look around with fresh eyes. What helps you clean up your act?
My studio is also the guestroom. So when guests arrive, I have to clean the table (which becomes the guest’s computer desk) and take everything off the futon, which becomes the bed. But lucky for me, it is now summer, and no one in their right mind comes to visit Phoenix in the summer–it will be 41º C this weekend, just in time for the beginning of June!
There’s natural beauty in such creative disarray..the happy tumble and randomness of things.
Seriously impressed with that stack of washi tapes! For the past few years my arting has taken place at the breakfast bar in the kitchen, so it needs to be cleaned up between uses. I can’t wait till I can move back out to the studio again. I do like a clean space though.
LOVE this photo… it makes me “HAPPY!” :]
** seeing the pile of washi tape and the look on that cat’s face… ” cracks me up!”
WAY TOO CUTE!!
That makes me chuckle, beautiful photo. I could have written this. Only guests can clear my desk. But I stopped worrying about that. It is as it is…
I’m exactly the same. I can’t think properly when my desk is filled with paper, supplies, cat hairs and the sand they bring in on their feet on rainy days, but I can imagine a million other things that need to be done to avoid doing it. I also clutter up our 4 m dining table, the coffee table has notepads and books all over, ahem… A sign we don’t entertain enough guests I suppose. Apart from company, the thing that makes me clean up is simply when my head feels so cluttered too that I’m stressed out by it and don’t get anything done. OR, if I want to do a project that needs a large surface….
I just cleared them all in fact, well, nearly, or I’d top your photo making it look like the most minimalistic table you’ve ever seen.
My desk often looks like that too if I’m in the middle of a project / just finishing a project. I try to put everything away to ‘start fresh and clean’ each time, but unfortunately, with my wondering mind and tendency to have a million projects on the go, my desk isn’t ‘clean’ often hehe. :)
Haha. My desk.. tidy?! :-D
seems to be a familiar dilemma among artists…we’re really good at making the messes but it’s so much easier on the brain to create in a tidy setting!
My art desk is so busy holding stuff that I actually work at the dining room table. I love how it looks tidied up though.
I tidy it when guests come, or when I am procrastinating about something else. Then again sometimes it gets so bad I attack it with gusto and have a big clear out.