[Clayart] Wrapping for storage, was Clayart Digest, Vol 50, Issue 25

[Kathy Forer]

Candace, I’m sorry to hear you’re leaving behind the 48 cu ft gas kiln. Hank Murrow’s cone 10 could be just the thing to renew enthusiasm. I hope you find new ways of working that will satisfy as you consolidate. 

I’m looking forward to working smaller for the time being. Various contingencies left me with a handful of ten year projects. I’m finishing them but 98%, 99%, 99.5% they get cliser but don’t quite get to let go. I’m eager to make something and finish same day even if it’s a sketch. Also work from my sketchbooks more. Enough working slow!

I have three options at the moment, one tiny Emily Dickinson sweet rental in a nearby Mayberry-like town. A third the size of where I am now. Girl Scout cookies, kids on bicycles, walk to the market. Shed or basement for kiln and yard and sun to garden. Lots of birds. Feels homey. 

A second larger rental in a ho-hum kind of town, also close to where I am still now. It has a large open space for studio, also room for an office and living space, only a couple blocks from the bay. I need to check the flood maps for that one. Works but doesn’t seem all that inviting to me. 

And a third just came up tonight, top two floors of a house back in a quiet part of Bronx, NYC, my hometown. Top floor studio, lug, lug lug, but has a porch and skylights with shades and nice living/office space below. 1/2 hour to jobs museums galleries movies. Big change as I left the city 21 years ago but could be exciting as we look for more permanent abode. Maybe can even spruce up the blank-looking yard. 

I like the smallest place the best and think to move materials into the basement and more into storage a few blocks away. But hard to plan what goes where And I’m concerned it will be just too tiny. I’m so used to having it all in one place, the luxury of unity. Being back in the city, its outer edges, could be nice and it has a parking spot. I’m seeing it tomorrow and then will have more confusion and choice before I make a decision very soon. I was just about to change the way I was working too. Soon enough!

I agree about not wanting to share a studio. After all this time! Someone suggested a couple boat builders and one warehouse that might have unused space. 

Twenty-five pound boxes, maybe, but no more fifties. Heating pad!  I remember the days of my friend carrying one fifty pound bag of plaster on each shoulder up two flights of narrow stairs. I have a 24 x 18 x 9 inch piece of carved limestone that I moved here twenty years ago and relocated it by myself, up and down levels, various places in that time. Brute force no longer worked as of last year. I was pleased to discover how effective a lift of 2 x 4s was to raise it to the level of the base. 

Best wishes in your new home and studio. Are you moving to a new area entirely or close by?

Kathy 

>> On Jan 27, 2020, at 6:54 PM, feldspars <feldspars at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
> Kathy, I feel your pain.  Just packed up a 40 year old studio with an additional 10 years of gypsy studios.  I'm still half moved as I don't have a studio and not sure I can share a space after 50 years of working alone.  Good part is it forces a purge, bad news is I had to leave my 48 cu ft gas kiln.  Time perhaps to explore cone 10 electric although I'm waiting for Hank Murrow to get his kiln prototype off the ground.  It is a beauty.  
> 
> I'm still hobbling around from all that hefting.  Hard to tell the aging body it simply can't pick up those 50 lb boxes and bags without payback.  Hope the move in is uneventful.  Where are you headed?  
> 
> "It is thoroughly indecent to move a sculpture or ceramics studio! Good to get things packed up and decluttered but what a lot of weight to haul about. Would that I were a calligrapher or singer! 
> "
> Kathy
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