Monday, September 23, 2013

Studio organized... progress

It has been a busy week and half, reorganizing the studio space. As you can see in my previous post the studio was getting really cluttered and I was completely out of horizontal space. Things always had to be constantly moved around and a shelf could be used for just one thing, storing handbuilt pieces in progress, decorating or glazing.

One significant change was moving the kiln in the garage. With the garage in my working studio space, I often lost a day or two of work during a week because it got too hot in the studio. Plus it takes up so much room. Now with the kiln gone I was not only able to put another set of shelves, but also add another working table. Now with more that one shelf I don't have to move things around that much.



The garage space also got a uplift. The thing that bothered me most about it was the packing peanut dispenser which hung in the middle of the garage. Cannot live without it but at the same time it shrunk my space in half. I modified the shape of it and fortunately it fit snugly in the dead corner between the garage door rail and the wall and could also go higher up. And those Ikea shelves work great for me to sort out wholesale orders.


To move the kiln in the garage, I did have to have electric work done. Got two outlets in the garage for another kiln in the future and added other power outlets too. Of course, got a lot of light added as well. Now with the kiln in the garage, I don't have to worry about my studio working schedule. I can make things when I want to rather than waiting for my studio to cool down.

And cleaning out the garage and the studio, did generate stuff that was taken to the Goodwill, distributed to other artist friends. But there was significant trash which was taken to the dump. Any guesses on how much the trash weighed?

Monday, September 2, 2013

Studio needs to be cleaned and reorganized

To have a good functioning pottery studio, one needs space. That would be true for almost any artist. The more space we have the better.
But what do you do when you don't have the space? Well, you learn to efficiently use every inch of space that you have. And it is very essential, to clean out the studio and get rid of stuff more often.
I know of some artist who have huge spaces. I am not going to name any names, but I am jealous. Some of them have their space organized well, but most of them can get away with just spreading around which also results in collection of stuff that never sees the light of day.
So sometimes I feel that just having the big space might not be the perfect solution, though I will take it if I got it.
For some of you who have been to my studio know that I work in a fairly small space for he amount of work that I make. My studio is the family room at the ground level of our home and it is ~350 sq ft and also houses the kiln in it. Recently with constant firing and struggling with covering things because they would dry sooner than I want and with the increased production, some serious changes need to be made. In addition to this space I do use a one-car garage as well to store inventory, packing orders, and all the other misc stuff.
Here are some pictures and you can see it is pretty tight and always a challenge for more horizontal space. Well, I am making some changes and will post pictures of what happens later. The kiln will be moving to the garage and more shelving added to the studio. Garage space will be organized a lot better.... hopefully.



How big is your studio space???

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