I've been cleaning up my studio because I'm a messy worker and things had reached a crisis state. I am hugely fortunate to have the old summer house to use as my workplace. The space is generous and you can't beat the view. However the building is completely porous to wildlife so I have to protect against mice and insects. Also, the bats are back. When you see mouse poop sticking to the windows it isn't Mighty Mouse, its bats. When we were living in the house we sealed every place we thought a bat could slip through and succeeded in keeping them out, but apparently they have found a new entrance. The spiders have never been deterred. The other day I reached for my sewing basket and found it encased in webs by some arachnid yarn bomber. It was time to sweep out.
I've been plunking away at it for a week and progress is being made, but my enthusiasm is low. Usually cleaning up offers its own reward and once begun I won't stop until its done, but this job just isn't fun. Part of the problem is the endless decisions that must be made about past, present and future projects. Cleaning the studio means confronting and asssessing what I am making and why. I am not only airing the room, but my psyche, and all my insecurities are coming out with the dust.
It doesn't help that I am almost done with Lynne's table....coming to an end always makes me question my direction. I'm worried that what I've spent all this time making is mediocre crap... or maybe its just useless. Like who gives a rat's ass about tablesetting anyway? It is easily dismissed as a frivolous indulgence, subject to fashion, showing off and over consumption. I go on Pinterest and review table after lovely table, none of which is actually replicable by me or anyone else and wonder if I am just doing more of the same, only less well with bad photographs. I remind myself that I'm not making pictures, I'm making sacred spaces, but that seems presumptuous, especially when I try to do it for other people like I'm doing now. I haven't yet penetrated the surface and the voice inside says that I never will. Another voice says that the surface is all that there is.
And so... the doubts dart through my head like bats as I sort through the residue of months of work, but what can I do but go on? If tablesetting is a stupid waste of time, then my time will be stupidly wasted. This is my path, I have no other. Another part of me knows that everything is a door.