Creating a Home

One of the first things we did to make the new space ours, was to put out a rug that I have had through two prior homes. Consistent with my lengthy decision making cycle, I had once hauled home a total of forty oriental rugs, a few at a time, only to return them for a few more. This tribal rug was not what I was originally looking for, but it demanded my attention because it conversed so well with my artwork. I have found that it anchors our home and adapts admirably to very different spaces. With that as our anchor, we were ready to surround it with artwork.

When we took the artwork down from our old home, the house felt less like ours. It helped us to separate from and emotionally let go of the house. By the same token, we needed to reverse the process by getting our artwork up on our new walls to claim them as our own.  My husband and I have a few pieces of our own artwork up, but our home includes artwork from friends, and many artists who have become friends, often after we purchased their work. The artwork has special meaning because of that and a story often accompanies it.

With most of our belongings in our new home, we turned our attention to hanging our artwork. Now my husband is incredibly meticulous in how he does this. He finds the center line within the room and hangs everything else relative to it. It is a big production done with precision. Before he was hanging my artwork, I used to eyeball it and put a nail in the wall roughly in the vicinity of what I wanted. If it clearly didn’t work, I tried again. I didn’t know about such things as center lines. Now duly informed, I was prodding him to apply his expertise. I wouldn’t dare impose my technique on his pristine newly painted walls. I can feel him wincing just at the thought.

I was doubtful that we would be able to hang as much as we had in our prior home with its two levels and a stairway. And what was I going to be able to do in a round living room? Surprisingly, much more than I imagined. The floor to ceiling windows were separated by niches of wall, some large enough for fairly large artwork. We also had sculptural pieces which broke up the space, moving your eye to different levels around the room.  I methodically measured the width of each wall and matched it to a spreadsheet of our artwork dimensions to consider what might fit where.

 

I have often observed how artwork has conversations between pieces. Moving disrupted some of the chatter, but new conversations developed. And sometimes I was able to retain a “conversational grouping.” With my wall unit gone, I had to figure out where to place artwork. We had some shelves and a fireplace mantel as well as those artwork niches between the windows.

 

When we select artwork, we are drawn to certain colors, forms and imagery, so it shouldn’t surprise me that those colors and forms echo throughout, amplifying each other. The bronze color that united three pieces appealed to me. The painting is Ophelia, by my husband. My eye moves from that face to a ceramic face that we purchased in my hometown in Illinois and then to the horse that I carried home in my luggage from Paris. The artwork echoes my journey through life, connecting my husband, my hometown and our travels. 

 Sometimes the artwork lends itself to whimsical gatherings. I was entertained by my encaustic by Jeanne Gockley of a woman and a cat, looking curiously at the Randy Cooper sculpture next to her. Below her the curve of a piece we got in Venice echoed the curve of her arm. I recalled walking into a gallery in San Francisco filled with a gathering of Cooper’s metal mesh sculptures, shadows cast upon the wall. When I returned home, I contacted them and splurged on the piece, a birthday present to myself. 

Some new conversations developed between the glass and porcelain pieces I had collected over time and the woodcut over the fireplace. The large woodcut was created by a friend I had met at an arts workshop in San Miguel, Mexico many years ago. The piece had meaning for me because it captured an area that had felt quite mystical as I watched a series of Mexican women, each with a hand steadying a bundle atop her head, disappear into what seemed to be a mysterious vanishing point. My friend had created the image of place just for me. 

The colors in the artwork are echoed in the collection on the mantel and the piece on the shelf to the left echoes the flowing arms of the cactus. Our friendship lasted for close to thirty years until her passing, but I still feel her presence through her artwork. The glass and ceramic pieces below it soon grew into a collection as I unearthed pieces that had been tucked away in our former home.

 

Below that mantel, ceramic pieces framed the fireplace. My husband and I had met years ago in a life drawing coop so nude figures are often elements in our art collection. 

I soon realized that the tops of bookcases and cabinets provided additional real estate for artwork and art objects. I could prod them into conversation with each other. Art pieces join together to form a larger whole.

The possibilities continued to grow as I learned to think, well, creatively. A small carving of a monk from Spain blends into the background of a collage forming an entirely new image. 

This part of moving, I enjoyed and it continues to give me pleasure. I am especially appreciating the new conversations that are occurring and enlivening our new home.   

Stay tuned for Are We There Yet?

Claiming Our Space

We went through the purchase of our new home half sleepwalking. Were we really doing this? I couldn’t conceive of how our belongings would fit into this smaller space. In truth, the actual living space was about the size of the main level of our old home, but it was as if the downstairs walkout of our old home had disappeared. POOF!  Of course, that was where we stored all the things we didn’t know what to do with. 

We had purchased our new condo from the original owners, and much was as it had been when it was built seventeen years earlier. The place had open space and a great view, but not everything was to our taste. I knew that if we just moved in without changing things we didn’t care for, we would never change them. And it would take much longer to feel like ours. And so, we began to seek bids to redo the bathrooms. It had never truly occurred to me to rip out tile floors and tubs. My concept of remodeling hadn’t extended beyond a coat of paint. We were astonished at the bids that returned and continued to seek out new ones hoping there was some simpler and less costly solution we were overlooking. Ultimately, we did find the right person to complete the work at a more reasonable cost with us playing a more active role in the purchasing. 

We dutifully went off to the tile store to select our materials.That part of the journey was fun but tinged with uncertainty. We visited showrooms and big box stores for shower equipment, closet doors and tile. There were multiple intersecting decisions to make. Were we making the right choices? What looked great in the store’s lighting, didn’t always work as well in ours, so we had a few attempts before we arrived at the best combination of elements. Then we went through a similar process in replacing carpeting and selecting paint.  Ten samples of paint patches coated our walls as we considered what colors would work best in a room with so much light that paint colors changed dramatically throughout the day. We each could veto a choice and we had to both agree to move forward. Fortunately what mattered to one, mattered less to the other, so we defaulted to whomever felt more strongly. 

The incremental nature of the decisions made it difficult to picture the final result, but we began to trust our judgment as each of our changes proved pleasing. It was beginning to feel like ours. My worries about space had resulted in us taking out a tub and replacing it with a large closet which proved to be an excellent decision. I was also pleasantly surprised to discover that with ten-foot ceilings there was lots of storage space if I had a step stool nearby. Thus I found a home for the china and crystal that I couldn't give away. They harkened back to a time in my thirties when I took cooking classes and threw dinner parties. I carefully put each piece away, contemplating if I might ever resume such activities.

Each new purchase involved much searching and debate. We purchased a new bedroom set and couch and ferried our old couches to our artist studios, where we had to find room for them. The convenient thing about a studio building is that what doesn’t fit in our studios may be an inviting addition to another artist's studio, not to mention the free table where items that are left may end up in studios or repurposed in artwork. 

 Our condo had a round living room which meant that the lengthy low bookcase that once held glass and ceramic art objects had nowhere to go. Instead, it took up residence in my studio along with all our art books. My smaller paintings sat atop it. It looked as if it had been designed for that space. 

And I moved furniture out of the studio as well. When my mother passed away, I got the two mid-century modern chairs that had graced her living room since I was a child. I had housed them in my studio and talked of someday having them refinished and reupholstered. That day had come. They moved out of the studio to make room for other furniture and into our new condo. It is the first home my parents are not around to see, but I feel their presence through those chairs and other artifacts that summon their presence. I know my late mother, a nature lover, who always called us to the window to see a bird or a sunset, would have loved facing the park.

 

Most of our family now resides out of state, but one grandson is in a neighboring state and was the beneficiary of furniture and artwork. In an early visit his girlfriend admired a wood carving that I had gotten on a trip to Mexico. “Would you like it,” I asked, as I handed it to her. “It’s yours!” It was the first of many belongings that we passed on to them, pleased to have some treasures begin a new life with family. My niece, our first overnight guest in our new space, also left with artwork. Are you sensing a theme? We have a lot of artwork.

I soon learned that two people bring two different approaches to an impending move, each gravitating to action, but in different ways. Panicked by the mere thought of moving, I quickly began to sort through clothing, papers and books, thinning out belongings. My husband was not at that stage yet, annoyed as he tripped over my growing pile of bags for Goodwill. He envisioned a simple and orderly move. His theory was that we would move the items that we wanted to the new place and simply get rid of what was left. I argued, that while that was nice in theory, it ignored the fact that there is a sorting process that must occur and that entails getting rid of things gradually. It is an incremental process, not simply a toggle switch between keep or don’t keep. And neither of us had yet contemplated the difficulty in getting rid of things without adding to landfills. To give my husband his due, he was in his comfort zone, busy painting the condo walls while I sorted. 

While the bathrooms were remodeled, we were limited in what we could move in. Carpeting then had to be laid, and I had to wait until the painting was done. After those projects were completed, I began a daily trek each day to our new home, bringing over boxes to gradually establish our lives in this new space.

One morning shortly after the remodeling was completed, we woke up in our old home and my husband turned to me and said, “I think we should move in today.” I looked around me taking mental note of my surroundings as I wondered if this was the last time I would sleep in that bed. And it was. We moved in that day. What surprised me was how natural it felt. My husband remarked that it felt as if we were on vacation in a high-end hotel. It did a bit, but it also felt comfortable, like it was ours. We had begun to claim it as our own.

Stay tuned for Creating a Home

A Slow Jump Into Change

It has been a quiet year for blog writing. Also reading, painting and genealogy research. Many of the activities that bring me pleasure were abandoned as efforts were refocused on a more pressing priority. We have been in the middle of an interminable move.  Who knew it could consume just under a year? And so much physical and emotional energy. 

We decided to do it in a seemingly low-stress way. Having heard tales of people moving in very short time spans, we opted for the more costly, but lower stress strategy of buying first, updating, moving, and then the overwhelming task of fully emptying and disposing of our old home of close to 30 years. In hindsight, we traded one stress for another. We’re now at the “when will it be over” stage as we prepare our old home for sale. It is an experience that others in our condo building have all shared. They nod knowingly as we relate our woes.

 

I don’t remember my move to my former home being complicated. The decision had a different impetus. I had split up with a long-distance beau and decided I no longer wanted to put life decisions on hold, waiting for someone else’s concurrence. The home I was then living in was once shared with a former spouse. It was time to choose a home for me.

 

I didn’t have much furniture and apparently far fewer belongings. My handyman had a truck. I packed a few boxes, and they, together with my old furniture, magically appeared in my new and larger home. I bought new furniture and my now husband, then a new relationship, gradually moved a few pieces of furniture in along with himself.  After a time, his daughter who shared his townhome, had said, “Dad, don’t you think it’s time you left home.” And so, he did, selling his townhome to her and moving in officially.

 

Our time in our old home included years of collecting art as well as treasures from our travels. Years of having a home with lots of storage space. Years in which parents and sometimes siblings passed away.  We acquired the detritus of our parents’ lives as well as our own. And years in which we went through the disposal of parents’ homes and belongings, so had the beginnings of an appreciation that someday loved ones will be going through that process with our own belongings.

 

So, what led to this decision? It wasn’t an overnight decision. Neither my husband nor I are impulsive with big decisions, except of course when we got married after only knowing each other for fourteen years. We had no idea how long a new home might take. In fact, we looked for two and a half years, conscious that we were getting older and might prefer something that would simplify our lives. There were times that we each claimed we could have decided sooner if it was just up to us, but of course this time concurrence was necessary. It is a strange thing to imagine your future self and consider what future self might prefer. My very fit husband was biking 34 miles round-trip to our studio and reminding me that he wasn’t getting any younger. I was noticing stairs and gardening becoming more uncomfortable physically. We knew it wasn’t going to get easier and wanted to be in an environment where we could continue our active lives more easily.

What environment was that? We began by looking downtown and along the river, close to our studios and cutting my husband’s bike ride substantially. With that we were introduced to the idea of loft living, which originally sounded quite romantic, the stuff of movies. We looked at many of them and realized that light typically entered at one end, unless one found a coveted corner unit. Everything was focused on how to spread that light through what often was a long space. And trees. There usually weren’t any, although occasionally one might find one sheltering a balcony. Or you might see some in the distance.  For a long time, I felt like we were playing dress up, trying on different places and wondering who we’d be within them. Pulling the trigger 

was an entirely different decision.

 

When you look long enough, you begin to identify what really matters to you. And you begin to accept the hard reality that you may not find everything you want in one place. And that may be OK. I have often likened it to a relationship. You give up some things in exchange for the things that really matter. And then you throw in a bit of exhaustion to grease the skids. While I have a long research phase in decision making, ultimately I tiptoe up to the edge, swallow hard and jump. True to form, that is exactly what I did, only now it was a “we.”  And I have to say, I don’t know that I would have moved solo. Having my husband along for the ride helped immensely.

 I couldn’t imagine the path to get there, but figured other people do it and we could be other people too. I’m not so sure that’s true, but it is just as well I had that assumption, or I might have backed away. And that would have been a mistake. We are pleased with our decision, just not enjoying the tail-end of the process to get there. And I’ve learned that moving, at least disposing of one’s history, is not my skill set. As someone immersed in genealogy, it runs counter to my nature. 

At the end of the day, I needed light and trees in a walking neighborhood. We looked at several places in an area that offered that, not as close to our studios, but closer than our prior home. We both loved the area but held out until a corner unit with ceiling to floor windows facing the park became available. And then we both jumped. I picture us floating through space holding hands as we free fall into change.  

 

Stay tuned for Claiming Our Space