You might relate to this circumstance: almost every day I’m manipulating the universe behind the glass over many daylight and nighttime hours.
This is often wildly pleasurable, but to curb a total disconnect from substantiality, I have a personal mantra. Keep in touch with the physical world. Don’t neglect your physical environment. It reminds me to wash, sweep, polish, dust; and attention to such insistent chores is accompanied by a roving agenda of renovations – scraping, sanding, plastering, and painting.
I try to avoid having “zones of stagnation.” But my foyer, alas, had fallen into the chips-peeling-from-the-ceiling-bike-tire-marks-on-white-walls state of being, and every time I closed the front door too enthusiastically, emerald fragments of paint were left behind.
In August 2011, Ellena Rutsch (home turf, France) graced the Guest Spot at CatRutgers4art. Boy, did we have fun! This was one of the coolest collaborations, but all entirely cyber. Imagine how happy I was to hear that she and her mom, Dina of the Netherlands, were coming to New York this October. This called for action. With the expert assistance of my brother, Tim, I was ready to welcome the warmly anticipated guests. Entryway, living room, kitchen. Or, you could say, library, gallery, laboratory. It’s all part of exploring, documenting, living in a space for work, regeneration, and inspiration. So spiral down to this in your sweet time: it is a small world I have created, narrow, but very beautiful, and you can step inside, if you want to.
Photographs by Catherine Rutgers © 2012
You can sample the artistry of Rutgers Carpentry at blogspot
and paintings by Ellena Rutsch at the Guest Spot!
CatRutgers4Art 
Knowing your home as well as I do, this was a real trip seeing these beautiful photos! It’s like I’m there.
Hi, Susan, and thank you! These were quick, quick snapshots, and I was amazed at how well they came out. It’s exciting to me because these rooms have a lot to do with the digital art. The last time I built a canvas was for the pair of paintings “False Alarm” and “Is the Sky Blue When the Sun Shines?” in 2000. Hard to believe it’s been that long, but having (some of) the paintings and constructions on view often gives me new ideas, and every once in a while, I just pluck one off the wall and scan it. BTW, hope you’ll be back here soon!
Cat, your home is as colorful and warm as you are and I feel honored to have had an intimate glimpse of it… as Susan said, it was a real trip to visit again through this beautiful pictures. Love your work!
Great to see your comment here, Ellena, and I’m totally enjoying new discoveries of your fantastic artworks online!! Now, one of these days, I look forward to seeing them in the three-dimensional world.