I have a strong South Side of Chicago mandate - I take classes at the Hyde Park Art Center & find many of my supplies at the Chicago Creative Reuse Exchange (and library book sales / various alleyways) for paper crafts, mail art, collages, blackout poetry, die-cut and stamped greeting cards, puppetry supplies, letterpress work, and screenprinting and linocut designs.
The studio has journeyed through several iterations & tabletops. I find a lot of inspiration in the before & after & then back to chaos pictures of other people's desks, so I'm sharing a few of mine here. Hat tip to brownlineletters, racheljanson, and numberfoursoftacos on IG! (I also get a lot done on a lap desk, as possible / necessary.)
When I am not at the Hyde Park Art Center, I'm at the kitchen table (or dining room table) with tools at home that include: paint, roller, brayer, baren, glue, stamps, washi, paper, die cutting machine, open press project press, speedball press, button maker, scissors, x-acto knife, windex, ink, pliers, and other fun stuff. You can find lots of these things at upcycling shops & thrift stores!
spring clean - it was tidy in april 2026!
i always wind up working on the floor despite the existing tabletop work surfaces...
2025
the mess is part of the creative process, right?
2024
2023
2022
2021
2020 felt extra messy for some reason
inspo: another mess desk
sometimes a big mess is part of the process! (from a 2021 comics exhibit @ MCA Chicago)
(another example from a UChicago chemistry lab, 2024)
more mess desk inspiration from the "Sequences, Iterations, and Permutations” exhibition @ the Hyde Park Art Center, as seen in June 2022:
i didn't even realize when i enrolled in one of the SiP classes in 2023 that I had already seen some work from it earlier!