Salvation!

Here's my little altar greeting me every morning in my office, right in front of my computer.

I've been shoveling out my office and cold-painting/sculpting studio since Sunday, and I'm almost finished. I just have to go through two boxes of stuff for the office, put it away and then I can officially call "done!"

What. A. Production. I am exhausted.

It was sorely needed though. For an entire year both of these rooms went unattended, and in a busy artist's life, well...things pile up, as you can see...

This is what would have greeted you walking into the studio. A year's worth of mayhem and the remnants of Christmas debris. It was more like picking your way through an obstacle course than walking into a studio!

A view of both my sculpting station (left) and my cold-painting station (right) before the cleaning attack. Let's just say that getting any work done was challenging.

Here's the view from the window. It was ugly. 'Nuff said.

After two days of hardcore shoveling. Phew. There's the carpet!

YES. I cleaned not only the desk tops, but I went through all my tools and cleaned them (including the encrusted airbrush, nasty palettes and grody airbrush bottles) and threw out the epoxy-smoothing brushes that were toast. Everything is ready for me to get back to serious work in there.

There's such a sense of inner "ahhhhhhh" when walking into a newly cleaned and organized studio, isn't there? It smells of promise -- potential. Of new work and new ideas.

Now I've heard it a million times that if I cleaned up a little bit each day, things wouldn't get so bad. And this is absolutely true! But it's also true than when you're buzzing on the creative energy of the moment, the thought of tidying up is loathsome. Like electricity, creativity simply jumps to the next conducting substance -- something interesting -- with no regard for consequences. Now I know I should probably have more discipline, but well...I don't think that's ever going to happen. But it's also a fitting way to greet each new year -- cleaning the slate for a new disaster area to propagate. So tonight I'll go through those boxes so I can wake up to a fresh start.

"Every morning I jump out of bed and step on a landmine. The landmine is me. After the explosion, I spent the rest of the day putting the pieces together." ~ Ray Bradbury