Opening up the studio

Dear Diary,

One of my favorite spring chores is opening up my studio.  I don't use it from November through mid-April because it is so expensive to heat.  So on the first day that I can go out and start spring cleaning is wonderful.  The studio is attached to the barn so I can get there in my slippers!

All the wood was cut in my neighbors wood lot and dried in his solar kiln.  It is a tiny post and beam duplicate of the barn.  We, in fact, had a barn raising ceremony the day the beams went up.  The stain glass window was made in a studio in Portland, Maine.  The counter is from an old store in Portland as is the butcher's paper stand. 

It is a wonderful space to get away and create...the hands-on side of my personality gets expressed here.  Although photography is my passion, I've inherited my grandmother's and mother's love of craft.  I don't knit or quilt.   The work of my hands are mainly hand-made books and collage.  It matters not what you create but that you create.

“Women have sat indoors all these millions of years, so that by this time the very walls are permeated by their creative force, which has, indeed, so overcharged the capacity of bricks and mortar that it must needs harness itself to pens and brushes and business and politics.”
- Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own