This is the bottom of my Parian beach bag. Every year it’s a victim of more wear and tear so I add another patch boro style. This means the more the bag is worn, the more it will be repaired thus the more beautiful it will become.

Decluttering my studio also means coming in contact with repairs that have to be made. And I plan on affronting them boro style, too.  Because repairing is a form of aesthetics.

Decluttering and cleaning the studio is a method of disintoxication and, as such, a spiritual experience. Each time I ask myself: Do I keep this or throw it away?, I am making a decision about the direction I want to take my life.

The most difficult part so far has been that of going through cardboard “archives” (6 of them)…sketches, notes, art show invitations, newspaper articles, etc. The “personal” stuff is so much more difficult to deal with. It took a glass of wine to convince me to throw away 5 years worth of obliterated train tickets, souvenirs from when I commuted to teach at the Accademia di Belle Arti (Milan, Florence, Rome). My plan was to use them as a base for a painting. But the waiting list on my Things I Want To Do is so long that there’s just not time enough to do everything. So, being a part of my past, the tickets got dumped.

Hoarding desires is unhealthy, too.

Decluttering is also a way of interrelating with the space you have (makes me want to re-read Gaston Bachelard’s “The Poetics of Space”.) And of rediscovering what’s already there. Old things suddenly become new again.

It still will take me awhile to finish this gig. Before real cleaning can be affronted, the decluttering and re-arranging of furniture has to be done first. So I read with some envy about Clare’s cleaning of her Arthouse and home! Can’t wait to be doing the same!

Clare’s curtains drying in the warm October sun, happily flapping over the valley