My studio is in motion, these days, perhaps a good thing, but a little disconcerting.

A year ago, my studio was in the same place it had been for ten years: in the basement, fighting the old battle between Art and Laundry. Pretty much a draw, most of the time, an uneasy truce, provided I kept my eye on the laundry, which is fluid, and has a way of encroaching, by means of apparently benign and unrelated mounds of towels, pants, underthings, bedsheets, and loose socks (of course) toward my valiant attempts at artistic immortality. The battle yields a sobering revelation: we can live without art, but not without laundry.

Once you got past the laundry, you'd find me crowded into a 10' x 15' combination handyman's shop, clay modeller's studio, architectural designer's space, and, well, storage. Makes for a man who knows how to use space efficiently, and is a true believer in the old adage, "A Place For Everything and Everything In Its Place." A lot gets done in that little place, and examples of my work (and now Ann's painting) are ever-present, in various stages of evolution or deconstruction. Adjacent to the studio is (or was) the "Cloud Room," with a mural of blue sky and summer cumulous on one wall, and a painted Buddha in a wall nook. Here, metaphorically at least, the art begins, where all art and religion begins, in meditation: "To the mind that is still, the whole universe surrenders."

However, with the Fallen Officer Memorial commission from the City of Roanoke, I gleefully exited the basement and went to a space on the Virginia Tech campus, on loan from the Art Department and at the invitation of Sculpture Professor Steven Bickley. Ah, the luxury! Room for a modelling stand, and rolling pedestal, and vertical mirror, and clay box, and work tables; room to sculpt two lifesize figures. Room for Hope! Hope that this is the beginning of a new phase in "my" sojourn as artist.

Yet "all is burning, monks," as the Buddha taught: Reality is dynamic, ever-shifting. Fall semester is coming (or as already arrived, perhaps, by the time you read this), and I've got to exit again. Where? A classroom in the old B'Burg Middle School? A frame building on skids out on "Mountain Man John's" property? A dome in our backyard?
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