I write this sitting not in a kitchen sink, but in a studio. My studio. For a few weeks at least.
It’s all very exciting, and it comes about because I have taken my own advice and shown my work, as Austin Kleon tells us to do. (OK, I’ll share the advice honours with him - it’s a great little book.) Once you do that, you make yourself findable, he says. In a nutshell, if you’re not findable, then it’s much harder for people to see what you are doing, and for good things to happen as a result.
I started the showing and sharing - I should say restarted because I wasn’t exactly a novice but I had certainly lapsed - with the Persephone Post. Then I took Phoebe’s advice to write this newsletter (OK, I guess I also have to share the advice honours with her). Not, it must be said, with any objectives other than to get writing again. But, as happened with my blog and books, things have just turned up as a result of putting my words and pictures out in the world.
Because I took this new leap into the unknown, I now find myself in the amazing position of having a residency in a lovely studio, surrounded by Cambridgeshire countryside where snowdrops line the roads, daffodils are about to burst into flower, tractors rumble, the sky changes constantly, and where the quietness and lack of washing machine/shopping/cleaning excuses allow me to focus fully on the things I’ve been thinking about for a while. All this because, having read my piece on studios and my lack thereof (it wasn’t a whinge or appeal), someone very kindly offered me this place for six weeks.
I have been working from home for over thirty years. The jet-set international lifestyle of my twenties soon palled and, after being paid to visit most of Europe in marketing roles (not bad, I agree), I gave it up and went freelance in the wine trade. Other than for tastings, meetings and events, it’s been a long, long time since I left the house regularly for work. I’ve done it this week, and the effect is very interesting.
I’m actually in a little house, with a kitchen, bedroom, and large working space. So it’s still a domestic setting, but I’ve already discovered that the separation from the home-domestic to the studio-domestic means I feel I don’t have to justify what I’m doing in terms of an end product or what I plan to do with something. Suddenly I am untethered from questions of practicality and usefulness - and nearly all the things I have done to date have been practical, useful, or edible. Instead, I can focus on process and ideas. Maybe I needed to leave home for a second time in oder to think differently.
I feel this is my atelier, a word I like in English and French with connotations in both of a craft/sewing workshop rather than art studio. My big table is on the first floor, and for some reason I’ve always thought of ateliers as being higher up a building.
[Phantom Thread (2017)]
Also, I’ve decided to concentrate while I’m here on textiles, and particularly on smocking on ecru fabrics. These these remind me of the haute couture ateliers I’ve seen in films such as Phantom Thread and Mrs Harris Goes to Paris - all pale toiles and pins and patterns,
and of the mesmerising photos and videos of plisseurs (pleaters) in Paris at work.
[Avenue de l’Opéra (1898) Camille Pissarro]
I’m able to listen to the radio all day long; I hear a programme about Proust on France Culture and I’m transported to an atelier at the top of a grand Haussmann building looking down on Parisian boulevard life.
This week I’ve smocked a king-size French linen/cotton sheet into what now looks like whipped cream or puffy clouds.
The reverse is like a giant ecru Rubik’s Cube with little pockets around each square which could hold or hide all sorts of things.
I’ve also made (extravagant) plans, gone for walks, cried at Desert Island Discs (Stephen Graham), listened to more good Material Matters podcasts, and written this.
[studio Birkies and hand-knitted socks]
This is my advice to myself: do it, put yourself out, say yes, feel uncomfortable, anxious, worried, see how it goes, enjoy it, stop if you don’t. Simple. But it’s all too easy to not do it.
Happy Sunday!
Wonderful. Can’t wait to hear about where this studio foray takes you. And ever so grateful to Phoebe Brocket for encouraging you to get ‘out there’ again. Love the Sunday morning Substack writing.
Brilliant! Having a creative space reminds me of Wolff’s observation that one does need a room if one’s own… however, she neglected the importance of it being separate from one’s domestic responsibilities ….. enjoy!!!