Can one be a fine artist and neat at the same time?

Here's the problem: My living space is neat and tidy. And so is my studio...relatively speaking.

Years ago, I had an introduction to an artist who went by the name of Suzek. She designed fabrics for Key West Hand Print Fabrics, one of the main attractions to the sleepy island town before David Wolkowsky built The Pier House and Disney began docking ships off Mallory Square. In short, back when real tourists and not just the international wannabes and middle Americans clogged the quaint old streets.

A typical Key West hand-print fabric.

When I first knew the shop, it was at the foot of Duval Street in a big commercial building. You could watch artisans hand-printing the fabrics. Later, it moved out of the highest rent district near the harbour into a large shop on Simonton Street, but one could no longer watch fabrics being printed. There were items of clothing to buy, though, as there always had been, made up in the bright, Lilly Pulitzer-like designs they'd always had as far as I knew. I first saw the fabric being printed in 1968; I last saw the shop about six years ago. I can find nothing about it, so I fear it has disappeared.

In any case, Suzek was a friend of an editor I worked with in Manhattan, where I lived. She invited me for drinks at her home. It was a conch house, a traditional Key West sort of house, made of cedar and set up on stilts. Doubtless it had the requisite number of scorpions hanging around in the debris outside (and there was lots of it, old tiles and canvases and things, as any artist will have), and an equal complement of various little lizards.

An alcove at the Andrews Inn, a lovely Key West B&B cobbled together from a few conch houses. My favorite place to stay in Cayo Hueso.

Inside, every surface was covered with drawings and tiles in some state of completion; Suzek was also a tile artist. I liked her tile work--very bright with primary colors and empty space--more than I liked the Key West fabric designs. I never actually owned any Key West Fabric clothing; I wasn't prone to playing golf or lunching at a beach club, which is what the fabrics spoke to me of. Still, the palette was vibrant, like the tiles and like Suzek herself.

Apparently, creativity sprang from every one of Suzek's pores, and graced her abode. While it would have made my more drafting-oriented mind into mush if I had had to live with the clutter, I must say, it was interesting, even beautiful. And it offered lots of entertainment while the hostess was in the kitchen making drinks.

I'm beginning to worry. Even my studio isn't as cluttered as Suzek's house was. She was a highly regarded artist whose production, one way and another, sold well. Is there a lesson here? Perhaps.

Perhaps I'm going to have to forget the lessons learned at mother's knee about clearing clutter, attacking grunge, and generally ensuring that, if one can't eat off my floors, at least one won't choke on the dust on the furniture. That beds are ALWAYS made, the living room and kitchen look as if the house is about to be shown for sale at all times, and there is never an untoward odor, even from the dirty clothes hamper.

No, I won't. I think I shall have to continue to be a neat artist and, should I ever participate in open studios, I'll hire someone to come in and make an ungodly mess of things (see, it's there even in the words I use!) so my work will sell. I'll pay them well to make a really big mess; I wouldn't mind having the sort of reputation and clientele Suzek had all those years ago.

(NOTE: Maybe someone should do a study assessing the correlation between messy house/studio and art sales.)

Portrait of the artist at breakfast at an outdoor restaurant at the head of Duval Street, Key West, on a lazy summer morning a few years ago.