Cutting Through the Clutter

I just finished an 11-day class with Catherine Raines, a North Carolina-based collage artist and teacher. And man, is my workspace a MESS!

The class was great. I learned a great deal about the art and process of assembling a collage, balancing color/value, pattern, size/proportion, etc. It was an 11-day marathon of painting, printing, cutting, glueing, arranging and re-arranging. I created five pages of mini collages and really pushed myself to step outside my normal boundaries and experiment.

And as the class wrapped up with the final live "slideshow" of work from the 28,000 people (!) who joined me on this journey, I felt energized and ready to take my novice skills up to the next level.

Then, I turned away from my computer screen and got a look at the absolute disaster of my small workspace. Yeah, I'm not going to be creating anything today.

Instead, I'll spend some time sorting, organizing, evaluating and prioritizing my next steps. In my life, spare time is a precious commodity, so I want to make the absolute most of every second of it.

As much as I resent having to "waste" a few hours cleaning up in the physical space, I know this is also an opportunity to clean up all the mental stuff rattling around in my brain. With any luck, by the end of the afternoon, I'll have everything sorted, staged and ready to start my next collage session.

What about you? Do you find yourself overwhelmed and creatively "stuck" if your space isn't organized? Or are you more motivated to create in a less regimented workspace?