Building a Dream: Part I

For a long time I was perfectly happy painting in a little corner off of my kitchen. The light wasn’t perfect, but I made do with a daylight bulb in a clip-on light on my easel. The storage space was small, but I had this helpful little rolling cart. It was far from the studio of my dreams, but it worked. I admired the studio spaces of other artists and dreamed about the space I might create in the future! I even put a studio space on my dream vision board for 2020, not really thinking this could come true.

I might have gone on painting here for a long time, but then March 2020 happened. Friday, March 13 to be precise. From that day on, my little quiet nook off of my kitchen was no longer so quiet. All of a sudden, my husband and two daughters were home due to COVID-19. My husband was working 6 feet away from my cozy nook.

At first I thought I could handle it. Suddenly, though, a day went by without my sitting at my easel. Two days. Then three.

This tiny space used to be my artistic home.

A week passed. A month passed. My space felt invaded. I had lost all of my productivity. It also became clearer and clearer that the pandemic was not going away. By summer, I was not even sure if we were going to have kids back in school by fall (Spoiler Alert: They still are not back in school). My mental health was at an all-time low. Painting—once a balm for anxiety and stress—had become impossible. I had a serious case of artist’s block. I needed a place to think, create, and work.

I started eyeing a flat, unused area of my backyard. Could I build a studio there? I began to do some research on how backyard studios are build. I looked at endless images of She-Sheds and Backyard Studios on Pinterest. I read articles about creating outdoor workspaces. I researched pre-fab versus customized sheds. It became my favorite obsession. Hey, better than obsessively checking COVID case counts in my county, right? I visited shed builders around the county. I researched code. What was once a dream, now seemed like it could actually become a reality.

When I finally met with Jamie at Outback Sheds, I knew I had found the guy for the job!

Check back soon for Building a Dream: Part II . I will describe how Jamie and I worked together to design the perfect space!