Last year, when I moved into my studio space, I placed my desk where it seemed to make the most sense at the time. But almost immediately, I felt it was wrong.
Not dramatically wrong. Just… off.
For over a year, I kept thinking I should move it, but like many things in a working studio, I adapted and kept going. There was always another project, another pile, another experiment in progress.
A few weeks ago, I finally moved it.
What started as a simple decision to reposition my desk somehow turned into shifting the false wall attached to it, moving storage, reorganizing shelves, and changing the entire flow of the room. Technically, I only gained about four by twelve feet of studio space, but the shift feels far larger than the actual measurement.
It feels like an opening.
The office area is only slightly smaller, but the studio breathes differently now. Light moves differently. I move differently inside it. There’s more room to think, to spread out, to see connections that somehow felt hidden before.
And since making the adjustment, I’ve been working like a fiend.
Something clicked into place.
While reorganizing, I uncovered unfinished works tucked behind shelves and buried beneath years of materials. Some of these pieces suddenly feel incredibly relevant to where I am now as an artist. Ideas I once struggled to resolve now seem to be speaking more clearly. I’m returning to them with fresh understanding, new energy, and a deeper trust in where they want to go.
At the same time, materials keep jumping out at me asking to be used differently.
Old fishing rope wants to become roots. Plastic fragments start suggesting flowers. Seed pods, rusted metal, marine debris, fabric scraps, bottle caps, cordage, dried vines, broken objects I’ve carried around for years, they all seem to be entering into new conversations with one another.
My studio has always been experimental. My ideas have ideas.
But lately the work feels especially alive. One material leads to another, which sparks an entirely different direction, which then circles back to an old project waiting patiently for me to finally understand it.
I’m experimenting constantly right now, combining hoarded materials accumulated over decades with natural and unnatural finds foraged here in St. Croix. Some things are becoming sculptural. Some are becoming installations. Some are simply strange tests teaching me new ways to think through making.
It’s interesting how such a small adjustment, simply moving a desk, could create such a large internal and creative shift.
Sometimes all it takes is a new opening.
