Breaking up with old art supples

This is my second blog about 40 Bags in 40 days, the first can be found here.

As I mentioned earlier in the week, I'm doing a massive cleanup project at my house and my parents' house. It's an interesting combination of nightmarish and really, really liberating. Nightmarish because I can't believe how bad I let things get (and no, I didn't take photos because it's too shameful), liberating because I feel less weighed down by what I own as I'm able to get rid of it.

 My room as it was last week had one organized area - the closet that I had emptied and sorted through when I needed to store wedding/bridal shower presents in 2011. Because I had moved out, my room sort of became a storage space - my dad cleaned out his office and boxed up his laserdisc collection and moved them into my room to get them out of his way. Unfortunately this largely blocked access to the areas of my room that I needed to get to. But all that meant was that I had to have a plan to attack the room. I couldn't just go in blind and try to force space - there was no space to force; I had to systemically remove crap from the room and then minimize the floorspace that the other stuff took before I could really get anything done. So first I sorted through the stuff on top of, under, and at the foot of my bed before disassembling the bed and standing it up on end. After that I lugged the containers full of laserdiscs into the corner and out of my way so that I had some good floorspace to use for sorting (as well as for the ever-growing trash bag).

The current state of the room isn't any more liveable than it was before, but it is much more useable and as more space clears up I'm able to clean and sort more quickly. The only reason this is a problem is that I've now reached my art desk and (as every single artist you know will tell you) it's REALLY hard to get rid of art supplies and old art.

Art is an expensive hobby; the cost of art supplies is actually part of what drove me to crafting - a single tube of acrylic paint costs twice as much as a skein of acrylic yarn and you never need just one tube of paint for a painting. The cost of supplies is a huge part of why it's hard to get rid of them - you know how much you paid for your paint or your paper or your canvas, and you might want to use it again someday, so it's hard to throw it away or donate it because it feels like you're just shoving money into a garbage bag.

If you happen to have a huge stash of art supplies that you need to clean up or move from one state to another, here are some tips for paring down your collection:

1) Figure out if the supplies are in good shape
Paint dries up and separates, markers dry out, brushes lose bristles, crayons and pastels break, ink and turpentine evaporate, nibs bend, paper warps and tears, and canvases get stained. Look at your supplies carefully and if anything is in less-than-perfect condition throw it out. You don't need a box of broken crayons or a canvas with a rip down the center, and you sure don't want to pat to move or store it.

2) Consider the cost of replacement versus the cost of moving
I'm not a marker person - I don't buy nice markers, I by shitty markers meant for kids. It is not reasonable for me to move a bunch of half-dried, cheap markers when I could simply replace them at my destination.

3) Ask yourself if it's difficult to store the supplies
Watercolors are fantastic - they're totally inert until you add water and they don't take up much space in the meantime. Acrylic is fantastic in the short term - if you're only storing it for a year or two it'll stay pretty safe and isn't likely to leak, but it is completely useless if it dries up; the same is true of oil paints. Crayons and oil pastels are super easy to store, chalk and charcoal are subject to breakage and create dust that gets all over everything. What do you want to live with in your storage or moving? I'm probably going to end up with watercolors, some acrylics, oil pastels, and pencils - everything else is too much trouble to pack and move.

4) Ask yourself if you still use it, or if it will still be good when you want to use it next
I haven't painted with oils in about fifteen years. My oil paints are probably completely destroyed by this point and need to be disposed of since I'm not likely to use them again. I haven't painted with watercolors in about five years, but when I do want to use them again they'll still be in good shape so they're worthwhile to keep.

5) Figure out if there's somebody who could use it better than you will
I found a big box of tempra paints, markers, colored pencils, and crayons. None of them are worthwhile for me to move, but my mom's classroom might get some use out of them: if you have cheap (NON-TOXIC) supplies that are easy to replace, see if there is a school or a child in your life who might have some fun with it. (Again, safe is the biggest issue here - you DO NOT give any supplies with cobalt, cadmium, or any other heavy metals to children, don't give them to adults without warnings about the toxicity and don't throw them in the trash - they are considered hazardous waste. Find someplace to safely dispose of them by searching This Website).

Getting rid of or consolidating art is another issue altogether - each piece is a concentrated memory, a footnote of a day or a year, heavy with meaning. A lot of what I've found so far has been abominably bad art and I'm not sure what to do with it but I do feel like I should document all of the pieces that I'm not going to keep, so I'm setting the art aside to photograph before I either discard it, donate it, or give it away.

But here's what I've figured out so far about keeping or paring down art:

1) For complete works on small sheets of paper, you may as well keep them. It's nice to have a record of your progress as an artist, and a piece of paper is easily stored. I have a large three-ring binder with sheet protectors in it - anything that is approximately the size of a sheet of letter paper will fit in it and a binder doesn't take up much space.

2) For small sketches, either add them to your memory book (as I mentioned in my last post, it's not as complicated as a scrapbook, more versatile than a photo album, and it's nice to have different sorts of things from page to page) or throw them away. DON'T keep duplicates - if you have a sketch of something and a finished piece, keep the finished piece and discard the sketch.

3) For larger pieces, decide whether or not they're good enough to keep. You can always take pictures of a large canvas and keep the photo instead of the original piece. If you don't want to bother storing, transporting, or displaying a large piece try to either sell it on Etsy or see if any of your friends or family would be interested in keeping it - there are several paintings that don't mean much to me or aren't a good representation of my skills, but do a lot to liven up my Mom's classroom. I will say that I'm a little torn on one - it's a nude self portrait that I don't feel comfortable donating and isn't very good, but I'd feel pretty bad about throwing it away. I may end up cutting the canvas away from the frame and simply rolling it up and hiding it somewhere.

4) For full sketchbooks, absolutely keep them. One more book on a shelf is no burden, and it's wonderful to pull out an old sketchbook and flip through to see where you were whenever that book was made (a few years ago one of my sketchbooks was destroyed by my dog, and even though I was able to take pictures of a lot of the drawings I still regret losing the whole of the book). For incomplete sketchbooks, it depends. If it's spiral bound or has tear-out pages, remove what you like and add it to a binder with sheet protectors and donate the remainder of the book. If it's a perfect-bound book, fill it the hell up! Get drawing, people.

5) For sculptures, look up shipping rates and custom crate costs - it's freaking hard to move sculptures and it can be really expensive. If you DO choose to keep your sculptures, try to have them moved professionally.

I get the feeling that going through the rest of my art crap is going to take me a pretty long time. I'll try to be ruthless but it's pretty hard - it feels like I'm walking away from a part of me.

After that I've got a giant pile to start sifting through, so here's hoping that it moves pretty quickly.

I'll keep you posted.

Cheers,
     - Alli

Bag Count so far:
Trash bags - 12
Donations - 10 bags, a boogie board, and a bed.
Memory Book - 4 1gal storage bags
Real Day Count - 8
40 Day Task Count - 10