If I did not know many miniaturists I would wonder what was wrong with me.
I have a surfeit of stuff.
A lot of the surfeit is crafting stuff. I must have had crafting stuff prior to building a craft room on top of the garage. I do vaguely remember a bookcase that stood against the back of the chimney breast that overflowed with stuff. I do recall the sun room being full of doll stuff. The garage, of course has the kilns in it, surrounded, now, after the major garage tidy up, by space the final frontier.
The craft room being built and finished, filled immediately, or if possible, sooner. It does get tidied when both grandchildren come to stay because it is a bedroom for a grandchild. My grandmother had a bedroom for grandchildren to stay in. It had two beds, a wall mounted electric fireplace, the height of modernity, which I have in fact miniaturised and a Lloyd loom blanket chest which now lives in my loft. The blanket chest contains a very, very old duvet, which embodies the nub of the tidying dilemma, or, to count more exactly, three of them. Nubs, that is, not duvets. Well, I don’t think so, it’s a while since I looked.
You cannot recycle old duvets. They go to landfill. For a long time after we came to this house, as a consequence of coming to this house we were skint. Duvets at the time were very expensive. The one in the blanket chest, moreover, had been a wedding present from my new in-laws. Everyone knows you cannot throw wedding presents away. The late queen Elizabeth received clothing coupons from all and sundry of the ordinary populace as wedding presents, who were keen to see her getting married in something that looked unaffected by rationing. I have every confidence the coupons were used and appreciated. As was my blanket chest and the duvet. The blanket chest is treasured because it was from my grandmother’s house. Being pink with a flowery padded seat it goes with precisely nothing in the house anywhere, therefore it lives in the loft. Simultaneously such an indispensable requirement and also so utterly pointless, it almost holds sufficient qualifications to be a politician.
The spare room for the grandchild is only that for a couple of days every now and then, in between it is a craft room. You would think it would be the room where all the dolls get assembled and dressed, which it is. If you thought it might be the room where the porcelain gets rubbed down or china painted it is not, they are both dirty working which needs to be kept away from clean dressing. Dirty working happens at the dining table and gets tidied away immediately after completion, being health hazards on a dining table.
This is the nub of another problem, if I just did one multi-process arty activity, it might, possibly, be quite easy to tidy away, or just have it in one area or two, allowing for clean and dirty working. Would that I did. I still get the sewing machine out for alterations, a little bit of quilting and what have you. I have yet to get to the end of what it can do. I did give my basic machine to my daughter-in-law, which did clear a bit of space, although I do have a stand-by machine and enough bits of fabric to fill the corner cupboard bought to house them. I completely blame Create and Craft TV channel, now defunct, for that. They kept having sewing hours that made me think I would like to join in.
This is the real problem. I keep seeing, thinking of, buying books about, creative ideas I would like to have a go at. For this I blame my own nature and miniatures because a doll’s house contains every art and craft you can do, but in miniature. In itself this eggs you on, you know the highest ideal is to be able to make the house and everything in it. If you are competitively crafty, it’s the unmissable challenge, added to which it is in miniature if the entire finished item can fit in the palm of your hand, how much room can the making of it occupy in a real full sized house?*
Also, as I have written before, many times, anyone at all arty can tell you that all the creativity happens on the last six inches of the table, unless you are really cooking with gas, in which case it’s the last half inch and it’s a masterpiece.
Unless your brain works differently to all the artists I’ve interviewed and myself, no one just picks up the latest creation, creates for half an hour and then stops for lunch. (If you were doing that it would just be craft, not art, see below.) It seems to be the norm to take some time to generate ideas. The first half hour produces copies of something else, is remarkably pedestrian, happily contained in an inch of space on a clean table and as meh as anything can be. The second half hour is beginning to rev up, producing items that are even interesting to the producer, covering at least a square foot in possibilities. Then suddenly whoosh! Bits of the brain, hitherto dozing, wake up and join in. Your hands speed up, your fingers fly, we’re in the zone, the table silts up
Then the phone rings and by the time you’ve convinced the cold caller that you have enough loft insulation, it’s gone back to one tortured inch at a time.
Such is the nature of art. It can be pursued with forks and hope but if it happens frequently you know the absolute necessity of having the stuff to hand for the chase when the hunting horn sounds.
Herein the wellspring of another problem.
In the modern world it is necessary to buy stuff with which to make other stuff. In mediaeval times all you needed to do was to train your sheep to stand by your spinning wheel and you were off. All was well, the pair of you could sit, or stand patiently on your balcony for hours until a carter passed with a load of tasty hay.
Have you ever just put ‘glue’ into a search engine? Don’t do it before bed, you’ll be up all night. You actually know a woman with two entire drawers full of glue.** Which is quite a worry, you should take more care with the company you keep.
They talk on crafty telly about the die cutting revolution. Well it’s a revolutionary way of making money, that’s for sure. You have to buy a die to see what it will do. The technology involved is proceeding by leaps and bounds. Ten years ago a paper cutting die could have cut a square and cost a hundred pounds, now there’s one that could do a model Eiffel Tower side in one go and costs fifteen quid, how can you not join in?
I do. As well as all the boxes for the dolls, most of my other hobby, which is making greetings cards, is die based. The current machine spends a lot of time fighting for space on the dining table.
Herein another problem of creativity.
By the time I have spent an afternoon standing at the table cutting all the bits for an idea, and covering the floor with all the bits that fall out, by the time I get the good bits upstairs, I sit down and drop off.
There are people who do not have a creative bone in their body. My late mother was one such. Folks of this ilk are never surrounded by stuff because they do not need it. In my mother’s case this was just as well as she was married to a world class antiques collector.
I do collect the stones from the garden that are the discarded ends or nubs of the flint tool worker who lived here in the neolithic. And modern carved stones. And other stuff. And, of course, all the stuff I have collected in miniature made by other artists.
My only consolation lies in having seen various photographs of artists’ studios. Some of the most memorable belonged to famous artists, some did not and none of them tidied up at all. Ever.
Paint everywhere. Up the walls, across the ceiling, in lumps on the floor. Cliffs of canvases. Plague palettes. Specimen jars. Dead brushes. In the middle of the horror, the artist wearing the garb of a different sex and a model wearing nothing but goosebumps.
Total Recall of this is enough to avoid a dystopian future by spurring the artist to tidy up. Pick it up! Put it away! Find the table top! Discover the floor!
And don’t look at the stuff as you do it or you’ll be off again, producing.
As I remarked, I am as glad to know many miniaturists, as I am to know I am a one.
Phew! Nearly thought I was peculiar there.
~~~~~
*Every last inch, yea even unto the attic.
**Yes, me. Crammed.
~~~~~~~~~~