organize – Dora Ficher art

April 6, 2011February 28, 2015

Welcome to my New Studio

Spring Melody — “Melody”. Mixed media – encaustic paints, collage, oil sticks on wood 2.5 x 3.5. ©Dora Ficher 2011

I have moved to a “Studio Building”. 915 Spring Garden Street houses 5 floors of artist studios.

The building has a very interesting history: In 1909 the Reading Railroad completed construction of the 915 Spring Garden Street train station. During this prosperous era of heavy industrial construction, trains were the primary means of long distant travel, making 915 Spring Garden Street a focal point of commerce for Philadelphia.

And so it is today, only artists have replaced RR workers and the commerce is Fine Art not travel. Providing studios for over 100 artists of varied disciplines, from potters, furniture makers and jewelers to painters, photographers and sculptors

In 1981 the 915 Studio Building, as the public has come to know it was inaugurated, with a group of painters, potters, and graphic designers making up the role as tenants.

You can read the whole story here.

As many of my facebook fans know, I love my New Studio. I get to walk there, about a 35-minute walk from my home each way. So, I not only get to go and have fun while I do my art, I also get a good exercise.

The photo below is of the hallway leading to my studio #212 on the 2^nd floor.

It is so awesome to have plenty of room to work.

Following you can see some pictures of my encaustic materials and some new work I have done in the past month or so. I have been experimenting with different collage materials and with the torch to fuse the wax.

Study — Mixed media – encaustic paints, collage, oil sticks on wood 2.5 x 3.5. ©Dora Ficher 2011

Study 2 — Mixed media – encaustic paints, collage, oil sticks on wood 2.5 x 3.5. ©Dora Ficher 2011

Mixed media – encaustic paints, collage, oil sticks on wood 2.5 x 3.5. ©Dora Ficher 2011

Some new Poppies…

“Springtime” Collage, Mixed media – encaustic paints, collage, oil sticks on wood. ©Dora Ficher 2011

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April 7, 2010February 28, 2015

After – Getting organized

The “Get Organized” class was wonderful. If you need organization in your life, make sure to check it out.

I Loved the “Get Organized” class (for the 2nd time around) and found it very helpful to have taken it for a 2nd time.

My file cabinet does look wonderful. I have Re-Organized my paper files.

I have made many changes through out the last few weeks.

Among major things I did throughout the class were:

Cleaning up my computer:

Finding duplicate files/folders, getting rid of them and giving my computer another 20 or so GB of space.
Merging all my emails into one account. Get everything on gmail but have it set up in a way that it’s labeled before I even see it. My camp acct. Art acct. & personal acct. Much easier to keep up only one inbox.
I got rid of about 50 folders/labels on my email acct. which made everything much more confusing.
I am DELETING emails instead of putting them in a folder marked “starred to check”…which I never checked by the way.
I am working on NOT opening up emails unless I will take action at that moment. Not always successful but I am thinking about it and trying to do it.
I am still working on the studio space. For now my studio/office looking ok on one side. I need to take many things out and take to storage and then it will be exactly how I want it. I will post pictures up as soon as I’m done.
I have made another BIG change, when I pick up my mail I automatically recycle anything that I won’t use. Only bring in the house whatever needs to be shredded, or filed. No more piles of mail everywhere. Junk mail doesn’t even come in the apt.
Everything is still a work in progress but I have gotten much further than the 1st time around. So it was definitely worth it to take the class over again.

March 6, 2010February 28, 2015

Getting Organized

I am taking Alyson Stanfield’s “Getting Organized” class for a 2nd time around. You will see why when you look at the pictures. Since I moved I needed to reorganized everything so what better than doing a refresher course of this class.

Following are some “Before” pictures. Stay tuned for the “After” pictures in about 3-4 weeks.

These 2 pictures are of the closet in my studio/office. There are so many things that I can’t even close the door. The containers in the closet shelves are either full of photographs or belong to my son who can’t take them because he lives in Manhattan in a much smaller place than this.

To the right of the closet I have bookshelves full of books plus papers which I’m not sure if I should get rid of. Let’s call this side the “office” side.

Still going around to the right of the whole wall of book shelves is some other kind of shelves where I keep many things. Then comes the shredder and a little table with drawer where I keep all my camp things. Those 2 big blue & green bags are actually binders with all the emergency forms signed by the parents.

Hanging from these shelves I have These very cool colorful organizers (not sure what they are called) which I planned to use for my mail and other things but have not used yet. These shelves are in pretty good shape except for the top one.

The pic on the left is what used to be my desk chair which I now use to put things on because I don’t have an “actual desk” in the room and if I have to sit I use the big red ball which is supposed to be good for my back.

On the left you can see my printer cover with papers which I haven’t gotten rid off and next to it is the file cabinet with the scanner on top and a box of something on top of that. But…if you look on the shelves under the printer and the shelves to the right, I have all the printing paper organized.

Since I don’t have a desk anymore I got this computer desk on wheels witch I can take around the apt. It was the best solution for now.

So moving on to my studio side you will see that everything is much better organized and labeled. The picture in the middle has all my encaustics things. That black thing you see is a griddle which is used as my palette.

The rest are a few pics of the studio side. Everything is a little cramped but…this is the room I have.

Here you can see my easel and table which I use for encaustics and watercolors.

And remember…Stay tuned for the “After” pictures in about 3-4 weeks.