Space, the final frontier.

On Sat­ur­day I signed a lease to share stu­dio work­space at Art Explo­sion. I’m going to spend some time there today with the friend with whom I’m split­ting the space and I’ll get my key after the lock­smith opens on Tues­day so I’ll be able to come and go as I please.

I’ve final­ly bro­ken out of the block I’ve had for far too long and I’m draw­ing again. Most­ly I’m doing exer­cis­es to try to regain con­trol over my hand and eyes; I’m work­ing with a Hunt #66 draw­ing pen and try­ing to learn how to con­trol a flex­i­ble nib, some­thing that decades of work with tech­ni­cal pens nev­er pro­vid­ed. I’ve also been tak­ing my lap­top full of dig­i­tal pho­tos to a cof­feeshop to zoom in and work on parts of the face: eyes, noses, mouths. I’d for­got­ten how much trou­ble fore­short­en­ing of the face can be.

One of the ben­e­fits of hav­ing space at Art Explo­sion is that I’ll be able to take part in Open Stu­dios and I will have some wall­space out­side the stu­dio. I’ll be invit­ing peo­ple to come by as I get clear­er on the dates and times, but I’m excit­ed about putting my work up where it will be seen by peo­ple I don’t know, and hope­ful­ly I can get some feed­back and cri­tique from oth­ers. Well, and there’s the fan­ta­sy of sell­ing a pho­to or a poster too, but lets not get ahead of ourselves.

This is a tremen­dous step for me. Giv­ing myself the space to work, both phys­i­cal­ly and in terms of time and ener­gy, is part of the per­mis­sion I’ve been hold­ing back from myself for years. Time to put an end to doing less than I’m capa­ble of.