I know I could save myself a lot of time if I stopped worrying about how my house and garden look. When we were getting ready to move last year, I had little paper doll pieces of furniture that I moved around for months on graph paper trying to make sure I got the room set up exactly right. Then there is the almost obsessive rearranging of the mantel!
I have a thing with space- in my work as a choreographer, in my sporadic periods of visual art making, in my garden, how I hang art on a wall and how I arrange things all over the house.
I can’t really explain it- not sure that I could teach someone how I look at a stage full of people and instinctively need them to leave specific amounts of space between each other in order for the dance to be effective. I am sure many of my dancers and actors are frustrated with me when I move them by a foot or two or re-do an entire scene so that my spatial needs are satisfied! Often it isn’t the position the dancers are in but where they are NOT that matters to my vision.
I am fascinated by the empty space.
My senior year of college at The University of the Arts, I devised and performed a show that I titled, “A Space of One’s Own.” (Influenced of course by Virginia Woolf’s “A Place of One’s Own.“) It involved Anne Sexton poems, Buddhist stuff, Bonnie Raitt, Dar Williams, Joyce Carol Oates, some wooden boxes in varying sizes and shapes and a lot of improvisational modern dance.
It was cool! AND Very Important.
Actually, I am pretty proud of that show all those years ago and find it fascinating that this…spacing, the spaces between and the spacial relationships between people and objects …still plays such a big role in my career, art, and home. Hmmmm.
8 years ago, I started dealing with some life changing chronic health stuff. Soon I was barely working in theatre and music, struggling to care for myself and my family with extreme pain and never ending despair over it. I just had to do something creative and I didn’t even know it. At the same time, I had wanted to wallpaper my daughter’s room but I didn’t like the toxic vinyl wallpaper that was available. I wished I could use old wallpaper but it was hard to find and very expensive. I ordered some scraps and samples. I had always been fascinated with cut paper art and so I started making collages with vintage wallpaper- mostly trees actually- almost always with a tiny little bird sitting somewhere on the branches.
When I look at a tree in the distance, I see the gaps between branches, the sky or whatever is behind it. This is what I was capturing. I first made a couple for my baby daughter’s room and then gave some as gifts and sold a few to friends and then did a few craft shows. This was a whole new world for me because although I had always dabbled in visual art and was semi-serious in high school, winning some awards and spending a good amount of time in the Art room just like my sisters had before me, after that period I had focused all of myself on the performing side of the Arts- only doing some calligraphy and stage makeup in the years following high school and college. What a gift it was to be able to make those collages when I was grieving my physical body and the ability to dance and perform.
In the years since the illness(es) started, I have had ups and downs. I have been grateful that I have been able to keep performing in recent years but it hasn’t been easy.
I could write a book on dealing with chronic stuff but that will be for another day. For now, I will just say that I have tried my best to always keep that creative parts of me going and that has made a huge difference in my quality of life.
I think that is why my home and garden have become so important to me.
When you are Sick (capitalized on purpose), you spend more time than maybe you planned in your house.
You miss parties.
You miss vacations, shopping, eating out, meetings, and in my case, some REALLY creatively satisfying work. You let go of some dreams.
You lose friends.
You learn to make choices about your time and energy that actually you don’t want to make but know you must.
You also learn, if you are lucky (and willing,) how to purposefully add to the joy side of the scale- thus mitigating the heavy weight of chronic pain a little bit.
I have learned that I need to curate my very humble home so that it brings me as much joy as possible. Ok, part of it is a bit of an escape as well but it is a constructive escape and one that hasn’t wracked up debt and excess from Home Goods since I do almost all my shopping at thrift stores. (That painting over the mantle was 20 bucks!) I started the Etsy shop because I realized that I find more than I can use and it is fun to spread the vintage joy around.https://www.etsy.com/shop/tinybirdvintagehome?ref=search_shop_redirect
I also hope that my husband and kids appreciate having a home that is pleasant and pretty. It relieves a little bit of the inevitable ill person guilt- but that part of the story- the guilt- is for another day!
Nice piece of writing, Dierdre. Managing the chronic illness issue reminds me a lot of dealing with grief. Of course the loss of Kate will be ongoing grief that will inform all of who you are as a wife, mom, friend and artist. Thank you for your genius at weaving so many parts of your life into a whole fabric and for finding such great stuff in thrift stores! I personally hate Home Goods.
Yes, Marge- there are a lot of similarities between grief and chronic pain. Thank you so much for reading and commenting. xoxoxo
It’s all composition, dahling! Negative space satisfies when it’s just right..