I’ve been spending a lot of time re-organizing my art studio. It’s a good thing to do when you’re in the time of Ebb, and besides, everything had just gotten out of hand.

I quickly got the art supplies under control—but there was one category that took a lot of work.

The art.

I am not one who likes to accumulate stuff as it is. It makes me nervous. And when you love to create, artworks accumulate. In corners, on shelves and even in—I shudder to think about it—stacks on the floor.

So it was inevitable that the time would come when I couldn’t take it anymore. I gathered over a decade’s worth of work to sort and store and/or let go.

Art Journals and sketchbooks were easy.

They’ve always been cornerstones of my practice (and I can’t recommend working in them enough to anyone with an art practice), but aside from their value in the creative process and as a valuable personal collection of my art and art journey, art/sketchbooks don’t take up a lot of space.

In the picture above, see third shelf down on the right: one shelf for ten years’ worth of art journals and sketchbooks. Not bad!

The other art: not so easy

I had tons of canvases of various sizes and materials and so many works (and explorations) on loose paper.

So I started with small papers—card sized pieces—and decided to bind my favorites into small, handmade books:

I thought you might like to see what’s inside a a few. The purple book is a one I made out of old cereal box covers and paper beads forever ago:

Now I’ve filled it with my favorite abstract pieces:

This little zine is a fun grouping of a few fun collages I’d made several years back:

And then I turned a couple more pieces into covers for this book and bound in blank paper:

Which I then filled with a collage series from 2017. Basically, every day for month I cut up one page from a magazine and turned it into a collage. Here are a few of my favorite pages:

As for the rest of the accumulating artworks—small and large works on paper and stacks of canvases of various materials—I took a hard look at the work and I sorted everything into those to keep—and those I could and should let go.

This was probably the most difficult part of the process—but so worth it.

I feel much lighter and in a weird way, more confident

I guess because I can now see what kind of art I do—and don’t—like to make.

My art journey started well over 10 years ago, and I explored a million mixed media directions. I loved every second of it, but so much was simply learning—both how to create and also learning about my own self and what I liked to create and with what materials. I now have a much better idea of who I am as an artist, and I can go forward without holding on to work I no longer care about.

I donated the reusable surfaces and recycled a lot of paper…and now I have just one more pile to organize:

These are works on paper I do want to keep, and I’m grateful to Nicole Cicak for sharing her storage method: flat files. I need to put all the work in this pile in plastic sleeves and file them away in flat file boxes I bought on amazon.

Now that everything I actually want to keep has a place, I can go forward pile free. I will add sketchbooks and art journals and handmade books to the shelves and I’ll stay on top of storing—or recycling—works on paper. The kind of art I now know I like to make.

Bring on the next decade of making art!