What Dreams Are Made Of

    I sometimes dream of a perfect studio with beautiful furniture and perfect organization looking ready to be posted in a magazine.   My studio is a riot of stuff that I pull together in the work that I do.   I find inspiration in lots of things that appear to be junk in the eyes of most.   I like rusty metal, pieces of wood, odd rocks, broken jewelry, broken china, old paper, new paper, books, objects that people have given me, and of course lots of paint.  I have scenic paint, craft paint, wall paint, special kinds of paint, expensive acrylics, cheap acrylics, watercolors, tempera paint, and even face paint.   Then there is tile, stained glass, glass tile, mirror, beads, shells, and various objects that will someday be covered with other stuff.   All these seemingly unrelated things can be combined into another thing altogether.
    So I have another dream of a very large, even warehouse size studio, where I can spread out my items so that I can see them better and let them speak to me.  A place where I can spread muslin on the floor and build weird large objects and cover them with papier mache or cement or some combination of the two.  I am experimenting with assemblage which is like collage only you use more objects.   There is something fascinating about taking disparate objects and making something totally different out of them.   I like the textures and pattterns that come from metals and woods and plastics and paper mixed together.   I like trying to figure out what I can say with the things that most throw away.

     At this time in my life I do have a studio.  It may not be my dream studio but it is a real one, built in a double garage and made even better by a good contractor friend and my supportive husband.  I came home from a trip to find this studio built for me with tables on wheels and floors that are built above the concrete so it is not so hard to stand on.  Amazingly enough in this studio of dreams to be made, I can find almost everything.   There is order to my madness although you may not see it at first.   I have my paint areas, my collage and assemblage wall, paper storage, drawing tools, regular tools, mosaic materials storage, mags and books, fabric....I know where I keep stuff.   It is a place always in progress and I constantly try to make it better, but I like the fact that it is not perfect and I can spill paint or drop grout on the floor and I can leave stuff out if I want.

I think a lot of my life is about taking broken or unwanted pieces and putting them together.   I like the beauty and the story of of things that are not so pretty at first.   I like rough textures and patinaed surfaces that speak of mysteries to be discovered and possibilities to be explored.   Something may look useless and ready for destruction, but when we look deeper we can discover a new purpose.   It works that way for people too.  There are times in my life when I feel totally broken and unwanted, where mistakes I have made overwhelm me, or even a slight comment from someone else totally destroys the fragile view I have of myself.  Times where I am shattered to pieces and empty, ready to be discarded like so much trash.  There are times when I get to know other broken and shattered people because life has a way of destroying dreams and killing hope.    But I believe in redemption, brokenness made whole, and that is where my art springs from and my messy studio full of bits and pieces of stuff is a tool for my journey in the restoration of broken things and broken people.