I’ve always felt most inspired making my art in my home. Home has had its colorful interpretations in my life, but has never ceased to be my favorite place; a safe space to create and dream.
From the room in the house I grew up in, where the walls changed color every handful of years, with each moon-phase of life, with the bedding bearing a small indigo colored paint stain because art was almost always made on my bed, and the closet doors half covered with a temporary mounted raw canvas as I created the piece that ended a long art-making hiatus and eventually called me to my island home.
Then after, the long-retired horse stall, my first home in Hawai’i that I shared with my best childhood friend for seven months. I can still feel the sensation of pulling open its heavy sliding door in the morning, waking with the chickens, the art and found objects and over-worked paint brushes in recycled jars intentionally arranged on turquoise painted shelves, and the rug in the middle of the room, littered with paper clippings after a night spent Valentine crafting for new friends.
[Me in my horse-stall home that I shared with my best friend, 2012. Peep the Valentines I referred to tacked up on the wall on the right.]
Followed by the childhood dream come true in the form of a rusted Bluebird school bus whom I affectionately named my Destino. My home on wheels was as old as I was and over the course of a year and a half living cozily within its arched walls, it was also my canvas.
[an exterior look at my beloved Destino. If you think the outside is wild with color and pattern, you should’ve seen the inside...]
Then the merging of two lives, when I moved my small collection of belongings into a purple house where my love lived. I claimed the extra bedroom as a place to unpack my treasures and stage my art. It was my sovereign space that felt creatively mine in a home where someone else’s things had already been existing for years.
Next came majorly down-sizing life to fit two people into a nine by sixteen foot “shack”, as we lovingly called it, that was perched on a hill with million dollar views of the sea, that rocked in the high winds and the kitchen would get wet when it rained, where the bed was the only seating and also again the only place to make art. Somehow I was still able to coordinate four art shows within a year’s time from this space.
[Our nine by sixteen foot Love Shack under a full moon. We lived here with one of our now three cats, one goat, one pregnant pig, and a small flock of ducks.]
Then finally this space you see here; custom crafted and yet at times, even here, I’ve struggled with space for dye pots and ample surface space to print my fabrics. With good effort and intentions, I’ve set up outdoor home studio spaces that eventually become abandoned and resemble the ruins of a lost monument, and I end up back inside, in my home, where my animal friends keep me company, and the tea is ever-brewing. Dreams of my own creative studio on the land or even a rented space next to a coffee shop in town for Hina Luna sound romantic, but I do wonder if I’d ever find the same comfort there as I do creating from home.
So for now, what’s feeling good is this little corner next to my kitchen, a space that is devoted to creation, is freshly organized, and most importantly feels like home.
[the creative humble home of Hina Luna till early 2022 — revision in progress, photos to come!]
Reflection.
Where feels like “home” for your creative soul?
What do you require to feel your most comfortable and inspired to create?
How have your living spaces influenced your creativity?