Time management as a self-employed designer-maker is a really important skill to master. Unfortunately I never have managed it…
I’m always moving from job to job, always thinking “when I have time, I’m going to make this” or “when it gets a bit quieter I’m definitely going to have a go at making that”.
In my experience, it never gets quiet. There’s always something to do next.
With this in mind I decided a few months ago that I was going to take a couple days out and make a foxglove.
I had worked out how I was going to make all the parts and so I just got on with it. The results can be seen in one of my previous blog posts.
Since making that first foxglove sculpture, I’ve made six more and have another five foxglove sculptures still to make, all for customers. Two are garden sculptures, more about that in my next blog post, and the rest are parts in Ironwork Gate designs.
These new gate designs are turning into finished work that I feel is some of the best, most complete metalwork I have ever produced.
That first foxglove sculpture has also led to more sculpture and new ideas, and even new energy and impetus in my work.
I guess what I’m saying here is that it’s easy to plough the same furrow, to keep doing the thing you know will work. It’s is when you try something new and you find yourself going in unexpected directions, that you can be reinvigorated.
As an artist, I think it’s so important to set time aside to play with ideas, not to get lost in fulfilling the next order and the next order and the next.
It’s difficult, and I’m sure that I will forget this and need to remind myself again in the future, but at the moment I’m enjoying the journey.
As David Bowie once said “If you can touch the bottom, then you’re not out far enough” ⚡️