This morning we start with the enchanting "flower desk" of Tricia Fontaine. Tricia is an events designer and florist in Santa Barbara, California. "You did say we didn’t have to tidy up," she writes, "that you like to see the creative process . . . so . . . here goes. However with my shots you are probably getting more than you bargained for, messy is putting it mildly. Currently it looks like a flower bomb went off. "
Indeed it does, and I love seeing Tricia's workspace this way, in full creative swing....
"The workshop, which my husband built, is command central. Normally it is neat and tidy with all my craft items laid out. . .but when I have a large event in the works, I can’t seem to keep it together. Instead of fighting the process I have learned to just go with it and somewhere in that process magic seems to happen. This particular event, a wedding, happens on Sunday so I am truly in the thick of it! On top of the large amount of decorations I am providing for the wedding, it is pouring with rain right now, so I am unable to stage anything outside. I usually have a pot of tea going all day and a favorite movie playing while I work. There are generally a couple of cats underfoot or in the rafters or in the flower arrangements (my husband and I care for about 50 feral cats… but that is another story).
"Because my space is so messy right now I just had to include a picture of it clean to ease my embarrassment." Please visit Tricia's website and blog to learn more about her magical designs and events, including a faerie wedding.
Our next desk this morning is on other side of the country in southeastern Pennsylvania -- where Sabrina Vourvoulias (like so many writers and artists) works at keeping a good balance between work time, creative time, and family time. "Though I've written forever," she says, "I've only relatively recently gotten serious about it and consequently carved out a permanent work space for myself. It is in a corner of my kitchen so I can write while also spending time with my family. (The kitchen is the hub in our house, and since I work full-time at a newspaper in Philadelphia -- an hour away -- my writing and family time seem terribly limited and precious and impossible to separate without stinting on one or the other.)"
"My work space has a couple of drawings by my daughter, pages from my mother's sketchbook and original works by Bernell Loeb, Jane Runyeon and another artist (whose name I don't know but whose watercolor depicts one of my mother's sculpture installations at the Djerassi Foundation in California), along with reproductions of artworks by Ann Wilson, Frida Kahlo and other artists -- all pieces that inspire or inform my writing in a variety of ways."
"I also keep the materials for tiny books my daughter and I make in my workspace (she inks Japanese characters on the cover, I do simple ink drawings, then we sew them together with twig spines) because, truth be told, I'm terrible at keeping the rest of the house tidy and if they were anywhere else I'd lose them. The adjacent window gives out to twenty-some acres of Pennsylvania farmland."
You can learn more about Sabrina and her work on her lovely blog, Following the Lede, and read her most recent fiction and poetry publications in the Crossed Genres anthology: Crossed Genres Year Two, and in the Catholic literary journal Dappled Things.
If you'd like to contribute a picture to the "On Your Desk" series, you'll find more information (and the address where you should send your photo) in the first post of the series. Please note that you don't need to know me personally in order to contribute to the series -- all readers of this blog are welcome.
Click here for the full series so far, and here for our last photo series: "The View from Your Window."