Office Hours Blog 1

Something I was helped to realize through all the classes I have been taking this semester is that eventhough I do not have a job I have to show up to everyday, I do have a job that I need to do everyday. I decided that I would give myself "office hours" in the studio. The rules are that I have to be inside the studio, engaged in work for the minimum of 9am-1pm. Although this threatens to severely cut into my netflix time, I think it might just be worth a try haha. I also decided this would be a good thing to document both for myself and for anyone who might be interested in how something like this goes.

So I set an alarm for 8am and made my mind up to do this thing with my full heart and mind invested. The first day was not horrible, after all I am used to waking up at 515 when I am teaching. Made a huge dark pot of coffee, some nutritious bacon and eggs with a healthy helping of Sriracha, and checked my instagram on which I follow a combination of tattoo artists, graffitti artists, and contemporary art curation accounts for a little inspiration. Then I made my way into the room I would not be leaving for 4 hours. Most of my first day was spent stretching and reinforcing a rather large 48x32 canvas. This proved to be a bit more difficult that I might have thought, but it got done. I did some sketching while I was waiting for the woodglue reinforcement to dry enough that I could move it. I got a little bit of priming and underpainting done, but most of the day was taken up by the one man game of twister I played with my canvas. This four hours of work was a very rewarding experience. I hear about people who retire and dont do anything and wind up dying quickly because of a lack of purpose and to be honest I had not been as invested in having purpose as I thought I was. I was feeling pretty good about the experiment so far. The second day felt easier than the first because I was aware of the reward that would come after it was over and I was able to paint rather than stretch a giant canvas. Of course I am not in the act of slopping on paint the entire time, I spend time looking and evaluating and mentally sketching out my next moves. But one thing is for sure, I am in that room with the painting and no distractions the whole time. I got a little carried away and kept working past the end time of my "shift" and I learned a valuable lesson from that. If I keep myself to the exact schedule then the next day I am excited to get back to the painting from all the ideas I have come up with while making myself not paint, but that excitement does not exist if I allow myself to keep reworking everything I think up all day.

Anyhow I stuck to the schedule despite having a some severe things happen in my personal life. I learned a lot about work, reward, my own process, how my emotions effect my work, and that Nora was right when she said making a painting a little bit bigger creates a lot more work!!!