Holidays Approaching (the Studio)

This week has been spent mostly in temporarily moving my studio in order to create room for house guests.

I can heartily recommend designing your own studio using easy to move furniture because, over the years, you'd be amazed at just how often it's been useful to move or rearrange my working-quarters.  Sometimes its been because the weather out in my converted porch has been too arctic or Saharan; sometimes it's been to make room for house guests or house plants or visiting other-people's-cats; sometimes its been due to repainting or...

In a weird way, the moves are fun.  Working in a slightly different environment shakes up old habits - I kinda enjoy it - and when I move back into my usual space and configuration I always have a few improvements... plus it's tidier!

My studio, looking a little messy and November bleak.

More discussion of studio organization HERE.

As you can guess from the black box in the foreground, I am an advocate of the "Box" school of storage - everything for one project goes in one box, in strict chronological order with most recently utilized on top.  (File folders?  Phoo!)  I was heartened to discover that the famous choreographer Twila Tharp uses the same method, just with bigger boxes.  I like 'em flat-n-shallow for drawings - I started with pizza boxes.

More on office environments HERE.

Reorganizing the Studio

One key element in efficiently designing and drawing a show - not to mention other paperwork - is having an efficient office.

For me this means finally getting a theater carpenter buddy to build custom cabinets to hold specially-sized boxes to store drawings.

The standard for theater drawings is changing now as computer or CAD drawing becomes popular.  (Earlier POST.)  It used to be that a set designer would hand draw on 24" x 36" or larger paper, a size that is easy and cheap to store rolled.  With CAD I've seen all sorts of weird sheets, many too small to roll well.  I, myself, like hand drawing on 11"x17" sheets.  These store best flat.

I've been keeping drawings in clean pizza boxes: Pizza Hut "The Big New Yorker" boxes to be precise.

These boxes are slightly less than 17" clear inches inside though, making my drawings curl at the end but, being square, wasting room at the side.  After 130+ shows (plus architectural and other projects) and 40+ boxes, wasted space becomes important in my little studio.  So now I'm replacing squashed pizza boxes with spiffy rectangular ones from IKEA and The Container Store right-sized for my drawings.

Which all means removing every stick of furniture to replace cabinets under my layout table (and that table top too), then sorting through and reboxing every single file and drawing I've ever saved.

Yeesh!