In Disarray

My office, and thus my mind, is in disarray. I'd been unhappy with the arrangement of my office for some time, and today my new office furniture finally arrived. Of course, that meant taking everything out of every drawer and storage area, putting it all into boxes, and then sorting through it before taking it out of the boxes and putting into the new drawers and cupboards. It's a lot of work, and makes a big mess.

the view from the window - still in process

When I was a curator, I used to talk about designing a show as a kind of 3-dimensional collage in which the rule was that someone else got to choose what the elements look like. Reorganizing my office is not unlike curating a show, except that I don't have to please anyone but myself. As in making any artwork, what I need to do is to balance the colors, shapes, sizes, functions, and meanings of each individual element so that everything settles into a harmonious, balanced whole.

the view from the door

Now, the mess is pretty well gone, and I've re-hung most of the art. It's taken every spare corner of the day, and most of the spare corners of my mind. When something is out of balance, it's hard to ignore it and concentrate on anything else. At the moment, I'm still not convinced that I have it right. Like any other work-in-progress, I'll live with it for a while the way it is, and then decide.