Well, the construction is finally finished down in Mass so it’s time to pack up the studio, close up the Maine house and head south. I’ve been in Maine for some of the worst winter storms so far this year, but with 4WD, a back-up generator at the house and the studio in So Thomaston only 5 mins away it’s been fine, with the possible exception of the January Nor’easter storm surge and 13’ tide that caused Harrington Cove to flood and brought 7’ ice floes through our woods to within a couple yards of our deck. That was a bit of a scary one I admit. It’s been pretty cold since the storm so the floes have stayed where the water left them, still stranded in our woods.
Normally we close up the house after the final harvest in late October, but until the renovations were completed on my studio in Mass, I had to keep working away up here. It will take time to get everything brought up from the cellar to the second floor, unpacked, put away and set up.
Yet again I probably won’t follow the excellent advice from my mentor about what an artist should do after moving into a new workspace. He advised me to unpack and get organized, then take a chair, put it in the middle of the space and sit there for the better part of 2 days. It would take at least this length of time, he reasoned, for me to get oriented and settled into the space well enough to make work. “You can go ahead and make work without doing this, of course,” he told me, “but you won’t like it.” It’s true.
Getting moved into the new studio space in Mass. with my "helpers"