As I’ve said before, there are five of us, plus two cats, living in a small house. When we were house hunting, we wanted something small but with the requirement of one extra space for my art room. The “one extra room” we found is a long skinny room with lots of light, and as an artist, I have a lot of stuff to cram in there: acrylic paint, oil paint, watercolors, soft pastels, oil pastels, graphite sticks, brushes, papers, boards, easels, frames…you get the idea. The tricky part is storing it all in the small space in a way that keeps kids out of it, and making it clear enough to actually enjoy being in there! To make this space livable, there is a constant cycle of cluttering and cleaning. I purge the room (and the house!) fairly often, but this time, more was needed. My art room needed a renewal, just as my art and my outlook has been renewed. I took out curtains, junk, and reorganized to make it brighter, fresher and CLEANER. The good news for those interested in exploring pastels and fearful of what I half-jokingly call “pastel lung,” is that there was remarkably little pastel dust after 5 years of not wiping my window sills and top molding (gross, I know…sorry!). So, ta-da! I’m ready to work, the room as cleared out as its going to get.

I even cleaned off the kids’ art area. My trusty sidekicks got right to work messing it up, as expected. But what else is an art room for, if not to get messy?!