Art Studio

The kitchen in our home serves as a multi-purpose room. Although you can't pull a basketball hoop down from the ceiling, or fold the chairs out of the dining table, our kitchen does serve as a space for food preparation, homework, art-making, entertaining, laundry, band-aid application, etc. I put a stop to some of that x-treme functionality today by moving the art-making to a new home in our home, the dining room. Up until today the dining room has served primarily as a place to fold the laundry washed in the aforementioned kitchen, or to dump junk mail, bills, and school notices. While I think it's pretty common that dining rooms rarely get used because of modern day life/the break-down of the family and all of those other American culture reasons, that's not what I'm interested in writing about tonight.

Instead, let me tell you about my real motivations for making an art-making space/fledgling studio in the heart of my home.

William Morris, father of the Arts and Crafts movement in America (Google him if you like) is credited with saying, "Have nothing in your house which you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful." That statement has been running through my head for some time. I think it's what makes me constantly move and rearrange, and filter and sort my belongings. If it's not beautiful or useful, why I am I hanging onto it? (This I know; sentimentality can fill a lot of plastic storage bins in the attic.)

My oldest child attended a preschool housed in a beautiful old Victorian. The reason I enrolled him at the school was primarily because I liked the space. Inside the space, Art, Beauty and Order reigned. It was love at first sight. Glass jars lining the walls, each with a different color of hand-dyed yarn inside. Light tables with glass beads scattered across their tops. A fireplace upon which families were invited to place framed photos. Mobiles composed of branches and twigs some twisted with ribbons and bells and shells hanging from the ceiling. And there were even rules barring the Stupid toys, licensed merchandise, and plastic of all varieties from entering The Space. (I'll kvetch about the snack basket another post.)

The nursery/preschool/pre-k/kindergarten is much more a school than a daycare, and because they know this about themselves, they charge an arm and leg for "before and aftercare." They cater mostly to families with the ability to flex around a shorter school day, which leaves me, the full-time-work-outside-the-home-mother with my nose pressed against the true divided lights, gazing in with desperate longing. But, the standing outside, looking in situation is a sad math fact at this point. Tuition rates + three children = my second-born is unable to attend. It tugs at me in the worst sort of way as I would like nothing more than to give him that unique "Reggio Emilia" experience.

At the core of a true Reggio Emilia program is art studio. There are no predetermined projects in this space. In the spring when the local PS is gearing up for each and every student to cut a yellow tulip out of construction paper, "My School" students are completing ink sketches daubed with pale watercolors to post at the end-of-year art exhibition. (Disclaimer: As an advocate of the public schools, I feel compelled to say public schools are tasked with teaching All children. And we should celebrate the fact that they do in fact take on such a monumental challenge. The Reggio Emilia school only has to teach those who pay, those who choose Harvest Celebrations over Thanksgiving Feasts.)

But. Even so. I want that. I want that space for my middle artist-child. So, after a good three or four weeks of sulking and letting it sink in that neither my schedule nor my wallet can accommodate said desires, I decided to figure out a way to bring "My School" home. And here is my plan... The dining room will be our family studio. I/we will collect and arrange things of beauty to inspire us. I/we will dream up small art exploration projects for our family. As a family we will do what my husband and I initially came together to do, create things with purpose and integrity, live protected by love, always move in the direction of beauty. For now, I'm really just setting the scene. I've recycled most of the plastic, moved some art supplies to the middle of the dining room table, and am satisfied on this evening to have kept my chin up, gotten creative, and found a way to get what I want. Well, almost.