After a series of tight deadlines, the stacks of art paper in my studio are piling up and weighing me down. I’ve begun organizing all this paper, and the scope of task is commensurate with Hercules’ in the Augean stables. Although my studio smells better (than the stables).
Actually, if you’re a little under the weather, as I have been, it’s rather pleasant to sort through the scraps of paste paper, calligraphy, watercolor washes, color studies, off cuts and so on. It stimulates all kinds of ideas … which makes it harder to throw anything away. I look at a 2″ scrap of interesting marks and think: “That would go well in a book whose theme is …” and “That could be the anchor in a collage on …”
Here’s a display of some of the keepers. To give you an idea of scale: The white squares at the lower part of the picture are about 3″ square.
The big question is how to organize them. I don’t have a final answer. This time I sorted them into plastic bags by general size and shape. It’s no good keeping papers together by technique — paste painting, watercolor, calligraphy, mark-making — because of the smaller smaller items get lost between the bigger ones.
Like loose change, my inventory level of paper scraps is constantly being adjusted. No inventory, and I’ve got to start from scratch for even a little 1/2″ block of orange-red, say, that will “make” the piece. Too much inventory, and every project is overwhelming in its possibilities. Way too much inventory, and I might as well have none because I don’t even want to open the box.
Hi, Beth. Very cool site! I love the title.
Ditto on the whole organization thing. It’s so hard to know where to put everything, especially for us right-brain artists.
Hey, are you going to Island Magic? Just wondering.
Cheers,
Roann
Yes, organization is difficult, isn’t it? Now I’ve moved on to the large papers … and I still have homework due tomorrow.
I *wish* I was going to Island Magic. I keep looking at the photos on Alice’s blog and salivating. I really, really liked the week with Denis Brown in Florida a few years back. But even more than that, I’d like to be at Wells College next week, taking the class with Suzanne Moore.
There’s so much to learn, isn’t there?
My goal is to sort my scraps and pieces by color. you notice I said it’s my goal, not my reality. But one can always dream.
Clara
Hi Beth, I struggle with the same problem. I have various boxes, folders and under-shelf-baskets where I keep the scraps … leafing them through from time to time in search of something specific and then finding something else 🙂
But I can provide a suggestion: I’m collecting the small scraps to make a memory-game from them. I imagine this one very nice with all those lovely decorative papers!
Cheers,
Astrid
You can always make inchies with your littlest pieces. A set of alphabet inchies could be very cool. You’re not alone in the quandry of what to throw away and what to keep, but since my creative spaces regularly overflow with way too much of all kinds of things, including paper, I’m not the person to give any hope. My fabric and buttons, however, are categorized by colors. Go figure. Have fun! –LaRinda
Thanks for the comments, guys!
bookgirl, I’ve tried sorting by color. (Heck, I’ve tried a lot of things!) What I like about sorting by size is that I might stumble across a color I hadn’t been considering.
tulibri, a memory game is a good idea. Of course, I’ve got lots of *ideas* — it’s time I don’t have so much of 🙂
larin, I never heard of inchies before, so I googled it, and it looks fascinating. I love miniature stuff. I’m going to try inchies. I started a collage of 1/2″ squares back when we had the collage assignment. But I never finished it. Maybe I’ll blog it later.