Thursday, November 22, 2007

Studio Space

One of the things we liked about our new house was the three car garage. I was excited to have a garage big enough to actually park a car in and Tabitha was thinking about a place to work on her art. But fate and a canoe kit intervened.

About a year ago I got a Pygmy Taiga wilderness tripper canoe kit. I was going to build a boat. My friend Brett (who got a kit of his own) and I built a table out of 2 sheets of plywood in the garage. This, as you might imagine, took up a lot of space. I started working on the canoe, gluing panels of okoume plywood together, drilling tiny holes, wiring the panels together into a canoe shape, and epoxying all the seams. It was beautiful. There was a 17 foot long canoe in my garage. And then I stopped working on it. There the canoe sat, unfinished, while I spent my free time napping and watching all the soccer games I recorded.

Time passed.

The garage collected more detritus. The canoe rested on sawhorses waiting for my gentle caress. Tabitha asked if she was ever going to get a place to work on her art. I foolishly suggested she could could use the "guest bedroom." She suggested that we could clean and reorganize the garage to free up space for her art. I am many things, but organized is not one of them. Finally, things came to a head.

Tabitha attended an art educators conference last weekend in Pasadena. While at the conference, she bought a portable pottery wheel. The conversation went something like this: Tabitha:"I did a bad thing." Tim (visions of car accidents flashing through his mind): "What?" Tabitha: "I bought a pottery wheel." Tim (relief): "Oh, cool."

So we cleaned and reorganized the garage. Tabitha has space to work on her art. I might finish the canoe in time for next summer, if I can only turn off the TV.

No comments: