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Organic Organization for Artists: The Art Garden
by Carol Rosinski
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If you're an artist, you wear many hats. As much as I would like to devote one hundred percent of my time to my artwork, I have to juggle many other things during the day, and I'm sure you do, too. Along with my artwork, I have to keep the business side of things in order as well as all other areas of my life. Each facet of my life seems to demand equal time, and making sure each gets its fair share of attention has led me to create a flexible organizational system. This system can easily expand in any area and it allows me to devote my full attention to the area requiring it at the moment. Because the system grows so naturally and follows my own energy and needs so closely, it seems to be organic in nature, and so I have named it, "The Art Garden."
The idea of using a garden as a metaphor for organizing my interests and activities came to me while creating a database in a program that allowed me to use pictures for the navigational buttons. Having a great love for nature, I created drawings of plants and flowers to use as buttons and the resulting database looked like a garden growing on my computer screen. The longer I thought about what gardening requires and what it achieves, the more I realized that gardening could serve as a rich metaphor to describe an organic approach to organization. As you will see later, many aspects of "dirt" gardening find their counterpart in the Art Garden, with the added bonus that the Art Garden makes it easy to see how your own creative processes unfold.
To set up an Art Garden system requires that you take a little time to think about all the things that you normally have to do to support your art career. In other words, you have to plan your garden, pace it off and mark your rows. Thinking about all the jobs you have to do to support yourself and then categorizing them helps you to prioritize them, too. There's something comforting about naming all the jobs you have to do and finding a place for them. It makes them seem less overwhelming somehow.
I have three main "Crops" in my garden, and each has been planted into a separate "Row": The Art Row, The Teaching Row, and The Spirituality Row. These are my three main areas of concern; your rows may be different. But no matter how many rows you have, you will find that, in addition to producing their own fruits, your crops will tend cross-pollinate each other, too. For instance, I frequently draw images that I find in my spiritual practices. Many times, just the act of making notes in one area will generate ideas for another. When I work in my Garden, I can quickly move from one area to another to record ideas as they come to me.
This outline shows you the basic structure of the computer version of my Art Garden. The primary file, called "The Art Garden," contains my "Crop Rows," along with a few other additions. As you can see, each topic is easily expandable and the whole system is very visual in nature, allowing you to see everything at a glance.
- The Art Garden
- Art Row
- Current Artwork
- Ideas for Future Artwork
- Teaching Row
- Drawing Lessons
- Drawing Workshops
- Spirituality Row
Each subtopic has a page or two with information about that project. Under ">Art Row>>Current Artwork," for example, I made a page for each piece I'm working on so I can record what type of paper I'm using, the reference photos number and where they are stored. If you would rather keep some of this information in a spreadsheet, it's possible to add links to these pages that will open your spreadsheet program and take you to a specific worksheet. To enhance the visual usefulness of the system, I label ideas and projects that have deadlines with different colors so I can spot them easily.
When I put ideas into their proper rows in my Garden, I feel as if I'm planting seeds. After the idea is tucked into its row, my anxiety about getting it done subsides and I can let the idea rest until the time is right to tend to it. Sticking to a rigid schedule is very hard for me and this method keeps me on course while freeing me to work on the idea or problem that seems most important at the time. My Art Garden also is a visual way to understand what I need to do, what I want to do, and things I'm dreaming about doing.
Keeping my ideas safely planted in their rows frees me to pursue other things spontaneously. If I see an interesting lighting situation happening outside my window, I can grab my camera and sketchbook and devote myself totally to capturing the scene, knowing that I won't lose an idea or leave it behind because it has been safely planted in the Garden.
In addition to the Crop Rows, I've added three other features to my Garden: "The Tool Shed," "The Greenhouse," and "The Wild Flower Patch." Gardeners need a place to keep their tools and that's what the Tool Shed is for. I keep business information there, along with a few other tools that help that side of my life run smoothly, too.
Keeping my business concerns separate from the Crops has a beneficial side effect: it helps to remind me that my creativity is the main producer of what is essential to me and that the business side of this work is intended to support the creative side, not overwhelm it.
Other handy organizational tools that I keep in the Tool Shed are "Calendars" and "To Do" Lists. For my Calendar Page, I create a whole year's worth of months using a calendar template and then paste them all onto the same page. I keep these calendars small so that I can write beside and underneath each one. Highlighting important dates and writing information about it to the side of each month in the same highlight color allows me to see which dates are coming up and what I need to do for them at a glance. Underneath each month, I keep a Monthly to-do list. Things that don't get done during one month get transferred to the next month. I like very flexible To Do lists that flow from month to month because my schedule has to adapt as my needs and jobs change. If an art or other project becomes too big for the General to-do List, I make a separate list for it.
The Greenhouse serves as a resting place for ideas that are not ready to be moved into the Garden yet. I keep a "Garden" Journal there, where I can dream about my future crops and plan for them. When a new idea catches my attention in my Journal but is not ready for the main Garden, I put it in a folder called "Seedlings" so I can think about it, work on it, and nurture it until it has developed enough to be transferred to a Row.
We all have ideas that don't blossom as we expect them to, or that can't be cultivated, and I have a special place in the Garden reserved just for them called "The Wild Flower Patch." I think of these ideas as wild flowers because I believe that no idea is really a "weed" or unwanted. Wild flower ideas bloom according to their own schedule; giving them their own place adds the wild richness of the unexpected to my Garden. You can see what these parts of my Garden looks like below.
- Tool Shed
- Address Book
- Galleries
- Online Auctions
- Calendars
- To-Do List
- The Greenhouse
- The Wild Flower Patch
- Any idea that is blooming according to its own schedule.
Any word processing program could be used to set up separate pages for each subject, but it is very handy to have a small database program that keeps all your folders and pages in one place. That way you can easily find a page by sight from a drop down list. Notepad Deluxe is an excellent program for Macintosh and XXXX and XXXXX are good programs for PCs. All of these programs are shareware and can be used free for a while or purchased for very little money. I purchased Notepad Deluxe five years ago and have been getting updates for it for free ever since.
It's easy to set up this type of arrangement with real paper in a notebook, too. You can find colorful dividers to put in your notebook to separate sections and subsections. A three-hole punch allows you to add any kind of paper to your Garden. If having lots of color and textures in your Garden would inspire you, any store that carries scrapbooking supplies will have many options for you. Be sure to buy a large three-ring binder because you'll be surprised how quickly your Garden will grow!
I look at my Art Garden each morning. As I click through all my rows and to-do lists, the things I need to do become very apparent to me. This process helps me to focus and organize my day. Ideas that are ripe or need tending in some way will make themselves known and will become very clear to me. Ideas that need some time below the "earth" to develop their roots will stay submerged until it's their time to come forward for tending or harvest.
I've been using my Garden for a long time and it has developed in a way that suites my needs. Having a well developed Garden isn't as important as using the system, though. The Art Garden, when tended only minimally has the ability to reveal the gardener's own process of creativity. For instance, after working with my own Art Garden, I've seen that my creativity is freer flowing in the morning. With that in mind, mornings are a good time for me to work on my visual artwork and find inspiration for new pieces. In the afternoon and into the evening, I tend to be more verbal and so I like to focus on my writing then. I've also seen that all the other things I do to support my art, like building my website and finding new places to exhibit my work, can take up more time than I want them to. With that in mind, I've decided to set a time limit on these things. If something comes up that I need to tend to, though, I feel perfectly free to spend time on it because I know that everything else is waiting patiently for me in the garden.
The greatest advantage of all of working with a system like this is the feeling that all the things you have to do are being tended to. Each area of the Garden that requires your time receives it and each project can get all the attention it needs as it nears completion. Because this feature reassures you that all your ideas and projects are being cared for, instead of getting isolated bits of attention, you can focus exclusively on the project at hand, knowing that your "Crops" will wait patiently until it is their season.
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