There’s a drawer in my studio I just call “the drawer.” It’s where I put finished work, and right now it’s too full. There’s a pressure coming off that drawer, subtle at first, to not add more to the pile, to not clog up the works. The fuller it gets, the stronger the backpressure in the system. It’s a real block in my creative cycle, and I’ve found only one way to deal with it.
Burn it.
Yes, I burn my old artwork
About once a quarter, every few months, I build a fire and burn older work. That means all of it: finished work, studies, scraps, ephemera, the loose bits floating around the studio. Work that hasn’t gone out into the world through the shop, the mail, or The Art in Hands Project, where I give my art away and leave it out to be found.
It’s freeing. It clears the space, mentally and literally, for me to make more.
Watch the burn on YouTube, about a minute of me talking by the fire.
What I keep
I do keep a few things: work that resonates with me, pieces that show some kind of milestone or progress, and the few I just like. The rest of it? Into the fire.
If you’ve ever burned paper like this, you know it takes a little work sometimes to keep it going. It takes me a while. I have a whole pile, and I keep it going.
Some of what lives in the drawer
My Dark of the Moon series has been sitting in there with everything else. Crescents breaking open. Stars falling into the water. Light that refuses to stay put.
So what’s this got to do with your art?
Finished work is supposed to go somewhere. Out into the world, into someone’s hands, onto a wall. Or into the fire. What it shouldn’t do is sit in a drawer and press back on everything you haven’t made yet.
Keeping every piece can feel like respect for the work. Sometimes it’s just a pile. The making is what matters, and the making needs room.
What’s in your drawer right now? Do you keep everything you make, or does some of it go?
I’m not on social media, so my newsletter is how to keep up with what comes out of the studio next.