Mixed Media is a Curse

Check it out, this is how I felt cleaning out my studio this weekend.

I copped this picture from this blog

It started with making greeting cards, and morphed into mixed media collage. I started looking for tools and materials that I had not used or seen in some time. That led to cleaning out the studio. This led to a re-examination of the way I work, and that led to throwing out a lot of things I don't use. It was mostly scraps of fabric. I mean tiny shreds that some people use. I've read articles about people making collage and art quilts using tangled threads... I think they called it thread trash. I looked at the plastic bin of tiny scraps and thread trash that I never touch, and realized that I just don't work that way. I went through it and rescued a few things, but chucked the rest.

This brings me to my subject, that mixed media is a curse. When you are a knitter, you have yarn and needles, maybe some books. When you embroider, it's the same with the addition of the fabric you will embroider on. When you are a painter, you have more supplies; paints, brushes, canvas, easel, some tools, a palette, some chemicals. When you are a mixed media artist, you have ALL THAT AND MORE! You have everything, and you need to figure out a way to store it. Add found objects and upcycling to the mix and it's really over the top. There are entire magazines devoted to it. Cloth Paper Scissors Studio is about space and organization porn. Not only are these studios vast and amazingly decorated, but they are neat! I would defy them to show a messy studio, but I guess no one really wants to see that. We are not interested in reality. We want the fantasy of a neat studio.Or, at least the possibility of it. More about what I did with my studio this weekend in my next post.