Sorry I’ve been quiet. I’m on a mission to tidy “The Shed”, I should call it the studio or something that sounds arty but here in New Zealand “The Shed” has connotations of ingenuity and pottering about, which is true to me.
Ever since I read Virginia Woolf’s A Room of Ones Own I’ve had a language for this desire, this need to have my own work space. In New Zealand “The Shed” is traditionally a male space. We had a garage we didn’t use and converted it into an office for my partner when he worked from home. Now he works in the town office again and I am reclaiming the shed as my own. I moved all my things into the shed ages ago but it has been in a huge mess ever since, I can’t find anything and I realised how much I have hoarded kept for prosperity.
Thanks goodness for friends, Little Gem Shelly has been helping me cull the stash and we’ve been making up paper packs to sell at the next craft markets.
I’m working on an intro piece for a guest blogging spot at a new site dedicated to op-shopping or thrifting, watch this space for more on that.
Yay for the shed! I have a corner. The new site sounds wonderful – keep in touch on that and the guerilla project
Go you! on your mission to reclaim your life from the clutter. I am engaged in an ongoing mission to the same effect…in fact I just took a bootload of stuff to a car boot sale this morning and made $60 from a pile of cr*p.
On the name ’studio’ though – I am all too aware that calling one’s creative space studio IS a little wanky…but for me it’s like some kind of reclaiming or maybe just claiming an artist’s life from a working class upbringing experience where my ‘artiness’ and ‘weirdness’ was not valued or appreciated…so, yeah…I call it my studio to sort of go to the world at large “yeah, I DO consider my amatuerish dabblings important and real art, thank you very much” – hmn – not sure if I explained that very well. Anyway, knowing you, you’ll get it.
And I’m happy I’ll get to meet you probably next month!
I feel like we are proper mates, but we haven’t properly met yet. So weird.
And I love your reclaiming of ‘the shed’ off the blokes, too. xx H
I totally get the studio thing, it took me ages to say that I was a poet when people asked me what I did, it felt wanky but it’s the truth!
Yay to meeting in the flesh! Looking forward to it!
Wow, a shed of one’s own!
I’m quite jealous. A writer friend of mine said yesterday that she was really interested in writers’ desks – the spaces they work in. Sean said ‘I write on the couch’, and I do most of my writing on random tables various cafes, mostly on Cuba Street. Or occasionally I write in the dining room (the view is pretty nice), but I really like the idea of having a space – a whole room, that is just mine.
I hope that you’ve made your shed into a good space where your creativity will flow every time you step in.
oh there is nothing like a room of one’s own! congrats on putting yours together – enjoy it
Thanks gals!, it’s actually still a bit of a mess but I can reach the table now!
[...] Craft mistress Helen reclaims some space for her work – a shed of her own. [...]