For years I've thought it was just respectful of my ideas to keep all of them. There are notebooks and notebooks of them, plus loads of file folders full. Then there are notebooks of reference material on various media and techniques. Today it suddenly dawned on me that all these notes are a burden. Furthermore, they're a burden I could shed.
I've known that the bowls don't like really to be in the same room as my books. By "the bowls" I mean my vessel sculptures - iron, paper, mixed media. None of them seem to care much for books.
So it has worked out fine to have my books in the cabin where I live, instead of in the studio. If I need a book for reference, I can always take it to the studio. But I kept a lot of notebooks in the studio, thinking I needed them.
Today I moved them out. Haven't exactly found a good place for them yet, but I can make space in the cabin by moving books about. Now there's more room in the studio for work in progress. This is space I've desperately needed. What a relief!
Now I don't have ten years or more of bowl ideas weighing me down. That's a lot of ideas! I'm good at generating ideas. But all these old ideas are bogging me down. I just didn't see it till today.
I'm not tossing them - not yet anyway. But I can look at notebooks of ideas just as well in the cabin as in the studio. This frees the studio for - oh - for actually making new work! And it frees my mind for working spontaneously again. That's the way I used to make every bowl - completely spontaneously, starting wtih whatever "seed" was at hand. I've imagined myself working that way again, but it hasn't been happening. Now, with a clear studio space - just materials and tools - it looks much more possible.
10:26:14 PM 
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