Seven Year Cycle

“Doesn’t it feel good to know all your stuff is here?” John asked as he brought my easel through the front door. He was there because I can’t carry the easel, but also because moving out of Sabine Street was a momentous occasion and I wanted him to be part of it. Also, he has a talent for organizing things in the gallery and so he told me exactly where the easel should go, then carried one of my work tables upstairs, where with its legs snapped to the shortest position it now functions as a much needed coffee table.

And so today I turned in my keys to my Sabine Street studio. This marks the end of a long period of time – seven years in fact! – when I had two places to live and sometimes a rented art studio as well. It started with renting an apartment in Galveston to spend weekends in, when my life in Beaumont was closing in on itself and causing me both loneliness and claustrophobia. What followed were several apartments, first on the Island, then in Houston, then later in Beaumont once I sold my house (5 apartments total), and three different art studios. The maximum quota of dwellings was reached in the fall of 2017 when I had the house in Beaumont (which was on the market), an apartment in Beaumont (because the noisy neighbors made it impossible for me to stay in the house), an apartment in Houston, and my studio at Hardy and Nance. Though there was a time too when I had two apartments and two art studios… All in all, it has been very interesting but exhausting, and I really look forward to a simpler life.

I started reading up on renewal today, and how some think that life progresses in seven year cycles. I like that idea, and if that’s true, my seven years of having several homes/art studios were all about searching for who and where I want to be, and trying to change. I feel like I have undergone quite the transformation.