i have a complicated and unusual relationship with the things i have around me. i like to feel their organic shift and rhythm. if something is stained or torn or chipped, i certainly don't stop loving it. i often love it more. and i am comfortable with a way of life that is odd for many. i'm drawn to the look of abandoned houses. and my personal aesthetic has much of that worn quality in it. i love my garden overgrown and wild. i love the chipped paint on my front door. i love the vines growing along the walls of our house. i love our bare floors. our old original wood framed windows with the 150 year old wavy bubbly glass. we have a rusty mailbox i found at an architecture salvage place. i love the original paint and it's creaky, rusty hinge. i love things as old as they can be. our doorbell is an old boxing ring bell that echoes through the neighborhood whenever anyone yanks the chain.
and tom loves and accepts all these odd little quirks of mine. dusty books and chips of paint. photographs of strangers. rusty metal and stone. i'm lucky his suburban soul is drawn to my undefinable soul.

storms rocked the early morning. and rain has been falling most of the day. so for the first time in several weeks i was working in my studio today rather than on the porch of the studio under the sky and the maple tree. my beautiful friend eleanor had been planning to stop by later in the afternoon, but suddenly in the midst of loud music blaring from my work room with the sewing machine pounding away, she was at the door with rose deshaw. let me explain that many of my favorite books have come from the wonderful book store that rose owned many years ago. but even my favorite books are often subjected to the scissors if i'm making a collage and the right image presents itself. and although i was thrilled to see rose, i immediately felt chagrined for what i have done with her little treasures from so long ago (my mother would take me to her shop when i was home for visits from university in the 80s). i had to confess and show her the many collages i've been working on. and she approved!!! we talked about our mutual love of books and how my use of the images and the pages was a way for the books to live on past a dusty pile, or worse, a landfill. i loved having her in my studio, she is such a force of idea. but when eleanor returned from taking her home, it was with a pile of the most lovely 19th century books, well past their prime, with loosened or missing covers and the most magnificent illustrations. a gift from rose. exactly what i live to find as i scrounge through antique shops and thrift shops. eleanor and i poured over them as we visited with coffee and cookies before she left on her 5 hour drive back to port dover.
and i finished 5 baby quilt tops. it was a great day in the studio.

i'm spending this week cleaning out drawers, reorganizing closets, throwing away things that we've been keeping out of habit for a decade. all the things that are keeping our house from functioning smoothly. i draw no inspiration from tv shows that make heros out of nazi organizers, or that take rooms and strip them into vacuous lifeless boxes full of color coordinated department store crap. i draw inspiration from my own home. i love my home. i just need to get rid of the stuff i don't use, need or love. my wall of books in the dining room is perfection for me. if i ever try to over-organize this, something has gone terribly wrong in my brain. this is the top half of my wall of books. the bottom section is 2 feet deep to hold all my large art books. books are the foundation of my life and our house is built around finding homes for them. one of my favorite book features is the built in bookshelf on one wall of our staircase. when we were restoring our 150 year old limestone house, i felt such excitement when i saw the inside of the walls, the lathe and plaster, the beams....i didn't want it all covered up again forever. so, on the staircase, we removed the top layer of plaster, exposing the joists and lathe & plaster of the other wall. in the several inches between we created shelves. i love glancing over my books every time i run up the stairs, and seeing 150 year old plaster oozing between the thin strips of wood holding it all in place.i have learned to shelve my books two layers deep, where i can. i have a fabulous old corner cupboard that i absconded from my parents garage. my father had kept his tools and gardening equipment in it for 30 years. but i thought it was much better suited to books. it's about 7 feet tall and full of books, 2 layers deep.i'm also firm in my belief that my books need to be surrounded with all the other curiousities that i find interesting. so they are at times haplessly thrown together. but it works for me. i need/want to see all the things around me that i love. in fact, several years ago, i decided to take the dors off our kitchen cupboards so i could see things better. i find if i don't see the things around me, i forget they are there. this is so much more manageable for me. but back to the books. there are so many. and i love each of them. this summer when i was moving studios i moved books with the wheelbarrow, loaded on a blanket to keep the remnants of dirt out of their pages. i still have the garage stacked high with the books i haven't moved. that will be a project for next summer. but the book room at chasing lightning bugs studio has enough beautiful piles that it is a perfect winter hideaway.and now back to organizing. and cleaning and preparing our house and our books for a new year.