I just spent some time in a botanical garden. It was so fabulous! I wanted to go straight to my studio and start hammering, somehow using the textures, shapes, or colors in something I am making with my own hands. My phone has a ton of photos of leaves, roots, vines, flowers, and bark. I see those weird branch patterns on the side of a copper vase, or that ruffled petal edge surrounding a beautiful piece of turquoise on a pendant. Sometimes I imagine a particular leaf wrapped around my wrist, hammered out in silver to last forever. Seed pods as bowls, trunk sections as a vessel, root patterns in earrings, it all begs to be created.

My studio is huge by most standards. But it is stuffed with all the materials and tools for every kind of art practice. There's a sewing machine and boxes and boxes of fabric. I have a rolling cart with painting supplies, and boxes of canvases, frames, colored pencils, paints, and papers. I have several bookcases with books (I can justify any art or how-to book purchase!), and a rocking chair. And then there are all the metals and tools for making vessels, jewelry, and stone carving. I have a small problem concentrating on one thing, but then I get sidetracked and I switch it up and go back to a previous project. Stones and metal are without a doubt my favorites. I have sheets and scraps of copper and aluminum lying around, stacked up in corners and filling boxes. Silver and gold are more carefully kept, sorted by type, shape, and content. I have a large “stump” for raising vessels (it’s a heavy sand-filled box that will hold tools in vises and clamps) and several different hammers and stakes close by. There are stones on every flat surface. And I have a lot of flat surfaces: two jeweler’s workbenches, two work surfaces, a full-size office desk, and shelving units. I keep little cut stones in trays on shelves, faceted stones in the safe, uncut stones (just rocks, really) piled in crates. And there are partially finished stones in tubs and little boxes. It feels like a treasure chest with stuff everywhere, but it also feels like home.

I listen to something almost all the time in my studio. If it is routine work, I like to listen to an audible book (chick lit, anyone?), it makes routine tasks less like drudgery. Classical music is a favorite, but I listen to pop, country, americana, and singer/songwriter music a lot. And it’s usually played loudly! I have special earphones that allow me to protect my ears and listen at the same time (thank you, Bluetooth!) and a Bose speaker that can really crank it up when it counts.