chaos & clarity

 

a hole in the studio wall

aaaahhhhh

The Dwelling has moved yet again

Last time I promise....

I started off by packing everything room by room into these containers, with a photograph of each room, so organised....then furniture and dwellers got thrown into larger boxes because it was all just too much

OBK's room got a complete makeover with a fresh lick of paint Farrow&Ball's Mizzle and he got a new bed and futon mattrass, why: read below.

It would seem that whenever I have been busy making changes in the big house (where my husband and I live) changes in The Dwelling will soon follow.

It started a few weeks ago after having decided we needed a new mattrass, a new bed in fact (that's on me). We wanted something firmer to lie upon and a cleaner design, made using natural, breathing materials. We ended up buying a Karup solid wooden bed with a recycled cotton futon-mattrass. Our previous bed, an antique French romantic thingamabob is way too good to get rid of, hence I decided to move that one to our youngest son’s bedroom and his bed (one I had manufactured after the boys had both moved out) to our eldest son’s room. This led in turn to me having to declutter, repaint, redecorate, reposition stuff in both their rooms. I still refer to these rooms as theirs, although they're hardly ever here. The upstairs rooms are all small and there was a lot of moving stuff around and thinking going on in my head....While I was redecorating I escaped the chaos to spend time in my studio to try and 'make art' and once there, could not help but notice The Dwelling, which has become pretty spacious over the years and therefore takes up well, a lot of space in my studio. I think it was because I was already so focused upon this concept of space, or rather lack of it, that my mind wandered and hovered at the same time. I started asking questions: What if it were to move outward, without having to actually enlarge the studio and all the fuss of planning permission that entails? A bay window for instance, without the glass panes, a box in the wall-thingy? The more I thought about this the more I liked the idea. By this time having finished upstairs, for the time being at least my attention was diverted to our kitchen and getting certain things fixed that have been bugging me ever since we moved here 29 years ago. So I asked our carpenter/electrician/handyman friend who was moving sockets and a tap underneath our kitchen countertop for me (something I have no desire to master) if he would be up for the job. Yep, he said, it was doable and last week he got cracking and I am now refurbishing The Dwelling in it’s new location: in a box in the west-facing wall in the studio! It has completely opened up the space and feel of the place…..

I’m sharing photo’s before it’s done, because who knows when that will be, right. Just wanted to mention how I thrive on these bouts of chaos, how when all is in flux, a sea of possibilities unfurls. 

Which brings me to another thought path I stumbled upon whilst pottering about in the garden this morning: literally as I stood sweeping up leaves and mown grass and chucking it all into the wheelbarrow, this question popped into my head: what if I stop seeing gardening activities as chores to be finished, but started considering the whole gardening enterprise as a process, and that is by definition never ending. I know, a bit like house chores and, let's face it, life. Only done once dead. It immediately made the job lighter and me happier.

I have been absorbed by Nikki Dekker's book 'Graafdier' literal translation Digger-animal. The title refers to an insect Veenmol in Dutch Gryllotalpa gryllotalpa, Mole Cricket in English. I bought the book several months ago when we attended a talk in Villa Augustus between her and another guy who's name momentarily escapes me. We got to chatting afterwards about a stone she'd found on her walks and snails....well you know how I feel about them. I sense a strong kinship to her outlook on life. The reading has my mind spinning in many directions, I read in bed before I go to sleep. It probably affects my dream musings. The next day conscious ideas, notions emerge, often when I'm walking with Snoopy along the river. The other day I was thinking about the mystery of life and The Dwellers and how the making of OBK started everything there. How when a small bird skull, a cocktail stick, glue and a hazel twig came together he was born. It did not end there, because once OBK was whole a spark lit up in my brain, or whatever, and he spoke to me. I came very close to imagining egg and sperm colliding to form a new being, how in that split nano-second spark when first there was no life and then there is this Something that want's to grow and share a story. As if I suddenly got it, the mystery of life.....Nothing spiritual folks, I'm not into that word or kinda stuff, just looking for facts and truths.