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clutter and art room paranoia

updated sun 14 jan 01

 

Thom Mead on fri 12 jan 01


Hi to all the Clayarters:

Advice, please, from any and all.
As you know, I teach in a very very small Catholic high school. We have a
rather small art room for the 200+ kids I teach yearly. I make neatness (but
not the OCD kind) important to the kids.

But lately I've become art room paranoid. After 30 years in art and KNOWING
that a perfectly clean and neat studio probably means you are not doing much
of anything, I obsess on having a really neat room. We can find where all
our clay things are. We can easily find all scratchboard, painting and
printmaking tools. They are free of dust. We have good paper storage areas
and rarely does a book or tool from our
sizeable arsenal.

So do I

a) Waste my time and start spending weekends cleaning it to hospital fresh,
organizing beyond usefulness?

or b) Let it be a workable space, realizing that these kids love their art
and will continue to have it in progress in the room, and the effect of that
is healthy and we are fine?

Thanks for the mental health tip.
(No admin. or other person on this campus has ever asked me to get this
cleaned up any more than it is... What is wrong with me--I know, old age..)

diane in Georgia

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cHuCk on fri 12 jan 01


If it gets bad it just gets worse and worse.

I go in on week-ends and clean and sort.

Otherwise I start to hear too much of...."that was already
here...or....that's not my mess."

When it's to disorganized things start to disappear.

Taking care of the artroom is a little like Sysiphus rolling the rock.

"Success is a journey, not a destination."

Chuck

Thom Mead on sat 13 jan 01


Naw, this is not our problem. Nothing is bad at this point. =20
Nothing ever goes
missing. The problem is my perception of things as opposed to what is a g=
ood
working atmosphere. We have everything in order. I am just going through =
a phase
where I think I want things to look like an empty studio and that is unhe=
althy. The kids MUST be allowed to work and shouldn't feel completely sti=
fled as tho we were gonna do surgery in there later in the day!!!

As some other veterans of this say, if the work is good, and they clean u=
p their stuff
and store it where it belongs, don't expect it to look like Martha Stewar=
t's kitchen BEFORE she and Aretha started glazing a ham. I am at the poin=
t where I do know the =20
difference between ridiculous fastidiousness, I am just getting weird on =
myself. I'm not an English lit teacher, after all!!!

(If you saw my room you would wonder what in the heck is wrong with me, w=
hy I complain and what my problem is. As I said--old age is setting in)



----- Original Message -----
From: cHuCk
Sent: Friday, January 12, 2001 10:00 PM
To: CLAYART@LSV.CERAMICS.ORG
Subject: Re: Clutter and Art room paranoia


If it gets bad it just gets worse and worse.

I go in on week-ends and clean and sort.

Otherwise I start to hear too much of...."that was already
here...or....that's not my mess."

When it's to disorganized things start to disappear.

Taking care of the artroom is a little like Sysiphus rolling the rock.

"Success is a journey, not a destination."

Chuck

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