The Perfect Studio

Ever since I was a child, I wanted to live as any artist would, either in some old Parisian attic atelier, or a big city loft, or a large one room studio. In my mind, it simplifies life down to the necessary essentials (with way less cleaning involved), plus there's plenty of Romantic tall windows pouring in natural light, which define my lifelong scholarship: the study of light and optics within the natural world as it relates to the human condition. 

But, time and money conspired greatly against me: I either had a family member to take care of, or I couldn't afford it on my salary, or some man and/or a college friend wanted to muscle in on my living situation, such is my ability to properly house myself on less.

And so, many, many years after I originally conceived of it, I finally realized my lifelong dream of "aloneness" and oneness in one simply beautiful, humble studio space that I can share with you all. I can finally say with a sigh of relief that I spent my mid-years according to my ideals of comfort, style, and simplicity, and that I willingly left my "Bachelorette" years behind me just as I foresaw and designed them to be; on my terms and on my home turf. I can have the luxury of saying to my loved ones, at the end of all my years here on earth, that I ended my bachelorhood as splendidly as I entered it: perfectly beautifully. See it here, for yourself.

 
 

The Perfect One-Room Studio (Pearl River, N.Y., 2015).

At Home: A Bit O' Green

A cheerfully full-bodied plant.

I've been busily putting on the final touches to the studio apartment I moved into. This morning's delivery by the local florist (thank you!) filled the space with lovely (and necessary) greenery. I've written before about the principals of Feng Shui (the ancient Chinese philosophical system of harmonizing the human existence with the surrounding environment), but in the end, despite whatever philosophy or system you use, you have to go with your gut, and what feels right. We now know hard science backs up the health-giving properties of indoor plants, and that's just good, solid common sense. Plants clean the air of toxic chemicals to give off oxygen, the stuff of life for us.

It's not easy designing a space. Along the way, I've discovered quirks with this old house: slanted, deeply warped original hardwood floors, with burn marks from flying embers of long-dead fires that roared on the brutally cold nights of an upstate New York winter, and the occasional dropped cigarette butt from former tenants. It's been lived in a long, long time. The man who delivered my rugs, freshly laundered by their family-run carpet cleaning service, (who I recognized from high school back in the day), told me one of his buddies lived in this studio years ago, and so it is in small towns: we're all connected.

Hello, sunshine! A new plant greets the day.

You can tell that the wealthy farm family who originally built the house knew exactly what they were doing, down to the last detail. The back of the house faces the East, letting in the first light of the day, which woke up the animals in the yard, and also the farm hands, way before alarm clocks and daily commuting existed. Almost every night I see a glorious sunset that dips below the rolling hills of the Hudson Valley, where the big porch has held a chair with a gazing person on it for hundreds of years. And that's what great design is really about. No detail, no matter how small, is left out.

Soon to appear here will be the the final layout of the place, with lots of pretty pics showing "before" and "after". I know the design will change with time from the way I have it now (a new chair or two, moving stuff around), but it'll do for now, and it's finally ready for receiving guests and visitors, while life just keeps rolling on.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Stay Tuned....

For a handy, designing woman.

Hello, Dear Readers!

So where have I been? Believe me when I tell you that I've most certainly not gone away for good. In fact, the exact opposite is true! 
I've made a big change recently that's taken up a lot of my time. 
It's been exhausting, exciting, nerve-wracking, stressful, lonely at times, and also very worthwhile. Such is the life. Stay tuned for more words and pictures that are soon to come, and stick with me. 
You won't regret it ;)

Home: Houseplants

Me lucky charms.

You really oughta be down with the green thumb, because indoor plants are healthy all the way around. They look great, they create oxygen, and they make a space feel better. It's basic Feng Shui (http://www.amazon.com/Feng-Shui-Health-Accelerate-Recovery/dp/0609806610/ref=pd_sim_b_12), so get with it already, will you?  

A spot o' the green will do you a world of good.

Welcome to the jungle.

Home is where the heart is:

http://www.pinterest.com/mariedoucette/home/.

Birdhouses: Indoor Decor

The little white birdhouse.

I bought this pretty little house years ago, when I took care of my bedridden mom, down for the count with a broken back. I had spent some of the money I got from a contractual buyout (http://mariedoucette.blogspot.com/2013/09/sunday-paper.html) to spend a month nursing her through yet another fall, the result of MS and her own inability to cope with the disease. She was depressed, angry, and prone to violent fits. My brothers had warned me over the phone that she had gone seriously downhill before I flew back East: a normally intensely neat women with daily cleaning rituals, her apartment started to become cluttered, dirty, and messy.

Years ago I discovered Feng Shui (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feng_shui), and while I wasn't a mad devotee by any means, I bought a few books on the subject out of curiosity. Much of it is simply basic good design sense for any space: lots of light, green plants for color, oxygen, and good health, water features for relaxation, and mirrors to bounce around the light, to make small spaces feel bigger. The different centers of the eight-sided Bagua correspond to different areas of life; there's one corner for wealth, another for health, and so on (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bagua).

So, after nursing her physically and emotionally, I set about making her place warm and welcoming. First, I needed a lot of garbage bags. She had held onto papers that had the same year as my grandfather's death, which was never fully addressed in her mental health care routine successfully. I spent days going to her room to show her each and every piece of paper stuffed away into various nooks and crannies. She cursed me and fought me so viciously that finally, out of desperation and in exhaustion, I finally looked at her wearily and said "Look, honey, you can say whatever you want to me, but this process isn't going to stop. So do your worst. It won't change anything."

And like that, the spell was broken. I went to a crafts store soon after to begin bringing some cheer to her place. I created a little area of interest on top of a book case with a basket holding some fake ivy, and intertwining those branches, I stuck in these cheerful little birdhouses to add more interest. After I went back to Colorado, my mom thanked me for pulling her out of her downward spiral. She had gone to see a doctor who tested her for depression, and she had drawn a clock backwards, which is a positive sign of it. Her real recovery began, as so often happens when I am directly involved.

That time period taught me a lot about the power of beautifully decorated space, and how important design in the home is. It's where we spend most of our time. I hadn't really had a knack for interior design prior, because I never had the money or a place of my own to express myself, but once I came back to Brooklyn, my interest caught fire in earnest (http://mariedoucette.blogspot.com/2011/01/joys-of-winter-comforts-of-home.html). This year, moving back home for my own reasons, my mom turned to me on the couch, and asked me, "What is that there?" Only the white birdhouse remained from my time nurturing her through that period. I took the little birdhouse away, into the other room, and there it now lives.

http://www.pinterest.com/mariedoucette/birdhouses-and-treehouses/

Gardens: Secret Garden

Children's Garden, at the Good Samaritan Hospital.

Going to the doctor's is hard enough, but it's especially difficult for women and their children. On a recent trip to a local hospital for a free women's healthcare event that promoted breast cancer awareness, 

I saw this little garden out the window, and you know what? It made me feel better, like this was a place that cared about people. One of my favorite charities is Splashes of Hope (http://splashesofhope.org/), an organization that creates beautiful healing spaces, because as artists, they realize that an environment not designed for our senses is one that cuts out a huge part of our life. They give children spaces that make them feel more connected to the outside world by joyfully filling their senses. 

Leonard Nimoy, (SPOCK!) is very active for a hospital in California (http://www.leonardnimoy.de/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1558:the-healing-arts-&catid=27:interviews&Itemid=14) that did just that: it created galleries out of empty wall space for their patients, so they could stroll down the hallways and look at the art. One women fighting cancer said it gave her a reason to live, because she wanted so badly to get better to go outside to look at a landscape like the one she passed by every day with her portable chemo IV drip in her arm. The greatest gift we can give one another is the gift of hope, a reason to go on living, because we know we're not alone.  

What do your gifts do for others?

http://www.pinterest.com/mariedoucette/gardens-and-green-walls/ 

At Home

Cigar box for remotes

I found a great idea surfing online: repurposing old cigar boxes as stylish compartments for remotes. After a trip to the smoke shop in my 'hood, I scored a few for free. The owner had no problem donating them to my craft project. Thank you! They were a little musty, so I washed them out and lined them with adhesive shelf paper. 

Clutter-free coffee table

Et volià! Clutter-free for me. I'll use the smaller one for keepsakes, and the bigger one turned out to be large enough to house coffee table items. Gotta keep those Feng Shui principles tight and right.

Bright lights in a big city

With an artist, it never ends. We don't put on our jackets, shut the lights to a room, and shed the remains of the day like clothing. Ideas, images, text, narrative, stories, sights, sounds, smells—they fill our heads as we move through the world and stay with us. We are always looking, always aware, always seeking. And I love that, but it can be hard to explain. 

 

We compartmentalize so much during the day—constantly screening out the distractions that surround us to get our work done. Leaving a constricting environment is like letting my hair down, shaking it out, putting my feet up, and finally sighing in the comfort of my home, to release the pent-up breath I'd been holding in all day. Now I can just be me. We see design in everything, natural or handmade, so it follows suit that this would mark our homes, too. 

As in nature and life, change is constant. The seasons change, the lighting changes, the earth moves, and so do we. Nothing remains constant, static, stuck in place, dead. It evolves and adapts as we do. Our jobs blur the lines between disciplines into a harmonious whole. We do clerical, administrative, marketing, accounting, even change coffee filters, any facet of business you can think of, in addition to creating product on the clock. As"artist" is a general term and "designer" is specific, both accomodate as constraints dictate, on demand. 

And so I change my home with the seasons, as inspiration drives me, or as I see fit. It's an energy, that creative spark, and when it moves you, you just go with it. Sometimes it pans out and sometimes it doesn't, but the great thing that comes with age is that we master our impulses, gaining timing and foresight with the knowledge we constantly absorb. Unlike other disciplines, like music, acting, or dance, there are no artistic prodigies, because it's manual dexterity applied with accrued learning is beyond the scope of youthful immaturity.

I surf a myriad of design sites every day, including decor and interior design. As I was taking down and putting away the Christmas decorations, I thought about how much I love the way the lights look in this season. Why put away something so cheerful looking? But, how to incorporate Christmas lights without harkening to a dorm room? I'd been into solar-powered light jars for sometime, though they seemed really expensive. And I know I've seen lights in jars and vases, so why not? It took me back to childhood, to that magical time between daylight and sunset, dusk in summertime, when the fireflies come out twinkling and the crickets start chirping, as we ran about the yard collecting them in jars. Who wouldn't want to be reminded of that? Especially when there's more dark than light during the Winter Solstice.

After packing away the Christmas decor, I realized I'd left some green beads strung around a large picture frame, to give it some holiday color. Oops. No way I was gonna unpack that large container for some beads. Hmm. Then I remembered my cousin in New Orleans, readying for Mardi Gras. Aha! At first I had the beads as curtain ties in my bedroom. I liked the way they sounded as I drew the fabric behind the holds, but it was unwieldy to do so. Where could they go, as a reminder? I scanned the apartment, looking for places. They now happily adorn a living room shade, which is ornate in the style of a French Quarter salon. Perfect. I love the association—it suits the Doucette in me well.

Please feel free to borrow and idea or two. Heck, go ahead and steal them, because I sure did. Apologies to the design sites with the gorgeous lighting ideas that stuck in my head. I'd reference you, if I could separate you out from among the jumble. Anyway they are filed away in my brain forever, so thanks for making such a big impact on me. Here's some favorites that I scan throughout the day:

http://thedesignerpad.com/

http://www.loveitalot.com/

http://www.notcot.org/

http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/

À bientot!