I’ve read Rollo May’s The Courage to Create about 6 times. Once because I had to in college. The second time was because I didn’t understand what the hell he was talking about the first time. The third, fourth and fifth instances were all fruitless attempts to reconnect with my creative spirit in a somewhat pretentious way, only half paying attention because it was mostly to show how intellectual and progressive I was. This time felt different from the beginning. I picked it up off of the shelf in my house, where it sits with all of my other well worn, unread art theory and criticism books, and stared at the cover. A familiar ‘second year art student’ feeling of inadequacy and an underdeveloped sense of self began to creep in. Instead of letting it consume me and let it direct me to either put the book back on the shelf or crack it open just to prove something, I felt a sort of desperation to ingest and inhale the information inside, in an attempt to save my creative soul. As ridiculously dramatic as that sounds, I felt that the answers to this perpetual state of anxiety that I find myself mired in, might be in there and I needed to find out. This is not stomach pit, uncomfortable anxiety. This is throw your computer against the wall, snap at your loved ones anxiety that has the potential to be extremely threatening to my relationships and my electronics. Many Facebook friends and relatives over-post the positive effects of prescription drugs to help combat this ‘disease’ and think that numbing this feeling is the answer. This, to me, is the equivalent of putting an air freshener in landfill. It might mask a few cubic feet of the problem so that living in that box could be tolerable. It doesn’t, however, fix the root of the problem or help at all when you step out of that safe zone. 

I delved into a world of acupuncture and herbal supplements to help suppress this feeling ‘naturally’ and it actually seemed to help a little. I found that at my most idle (sitting there in the recliner with tiny needles stuck in my skin) my anxiety was the strongest… Yet at the same time, my mind started to race with creative energy and ideas. I came to the realization that  my anxiety is creative energy unrealized. As cliche as it sounds, it is literal energy that is pent up inside of my mind/body/soul and it produces symptoms of anxiousness if it is not allowed to materialize. The solution here is to turn into the skid… not combat the anxiety, but give into it completely and let it manifest itself. It is that anxious feeling that keeps you reaching for more. That idea that there is more to life, more to learn, more to understand. I believe now that this anxiety is a gift. It is an intrinsic need to create, to build, to teach, to learn, to grow, to impact, to empower, to give back, to speak, to LIVE. Who would want to suppress that? 

11.28.2016

I was on a path… a path of living selfishly in the pursuit of personal happiness. I was not fulfilled because this is not a fulfilling pursuit. I knew there was more to this life but it was not in the direction I was searching. Graduate school put me on a new path. A path toward doing work that mattered. Work that made a difference. It was fulfilling. I felt empowered, capable, and qualified, which were not things that I had felt before. I interviewed, got a job, and moved to South Carolina with that same sense of empowerment and a bright outlook on what the future held for me. At Lincoln Middle-High School that spark was not nurtured or tended to and it quickly burned out. It wasn’t the fault of the school system, or the administration, or my students… it was mine. I shut it down. I was overwhelmed and I felt all of my power taken away from me. I want that back. I want to do work that matters. Work that makes a difference in this world. Work that fulfills me and helps me to pass on a principled work ethic and a devotion to the aide and empowerment of others. 

I resigned from teaching to pursue and seemingly noble cause that would allow for all of these things. I believe that it is right and that it is the path that I should be on. However, I am idle and discouraged and frustrated right now. I am not doing work that matters. In fact I am doing work that matters very little. I am trying to see my interactions with the guests at the bar as something significant and that in some small way, I am reaching people and inspiring people and motivating people. Meanwhile, my own courage and strength is being shackled. I need something to give. The studio space, a part time teaching position, someone to take me seriously so I can start taking myself seriously. At this point, I feel as thought grad school and all that I worked for were fruitless. I need to straighten my path, right my ship, and not lose sight of the destination, yet somehow enjoy the journey and learn from these idle times. I need to use these down times to build strength, learn, and collect more tools for when the path gets rough. 

10.14.2016

Call to Artists.......

 Now is a time of anger and frustration and of demand for civil liberties and equity among races, genders, and other sub-divisions of the human species. It is a new time of global accessibility and a time when small, unassuming voices can be broadcast and ideas can ‘go viral.’ I am saddened and frustrated by our long standing systems that seem exclusionary and built for a nation that is radically different from its foundation. I am equally saddened and frustrated by our collective response to these issues. Protesting injustice is a right and a freedom that is granted to us as a part of this nation. A freedom that others have fought diligently for and continue to fight for overseas and here on our soil. We negate the power of that freedom and the toils of all that went before us when we abuse it and exercise it in a way that is destructive. When you respond to hate and fear with more hate and fear, it only perpetuates the cycle.
 I have been recently convicted that, not only is it our ability as artists to respond to the existing and changing world and comment on it through creative displays, but it is our responsibility as creative beings to document and reflect the nature of our time. We are the key holders, the owners of the symbols, the cartographers of the human condition. Historically it has been the poets, writers, and visual artists that have been the challengers through their commentary and therefore posed the greatest threat to the status quo. It has been seen that these creative individuals can change the world through words and images, not through destruction of property and violence against others. Why do you think Stalin made it a priority to purge the writers and poets from Soviet Russia, certain texts are banned from communist China, the Catholic church maintains a list of books (Index Librorum Prohibitorum) that are forbidden and political cartoonists like Charlie Hebdo are targeted for their ideas? These texts and images challenge the moral, political, or societal ‘norms,’ bring light to what ‘could be instead’ and are therefore deemed dangerous.
 With our country divided into primary colors and civil liberties being threatened here and across the world, I want to challenge the artists, the writers, the poets, to respond with our most powerful tool—our accessibility to bring into existence the non-being through symbols, words, images and structures. To reflect to the world what it is, and what it could be. I want to challenge you to bring attention to injustices by raising awareness and connecting people through language and through visual images, not violence and destruction. Rollo May (The Courage to Create) stated that ‘Human freedom involves our capacity to pause between stimulus and response, and in that pause, to choose the one response toward which we wish to throw our weight.’ We have a choice. Respond with anger, hate, frustration and violence; or use our intellect, our creativity, our understanding of history, and our knowledge of the world to interrupt the cultural and political landscape and be the ‘menace to society’ that we all know poets and artists can be. We know beyond doubt, from looking at our history (Thomas Paine, Langston Hughes, Fredrick Douglass, Picasso, Politkovskaya, Eliot, Tolstoy, Kundera…etc.) that the pen is indeed mightier than the sword. I challenge everyone to pick up those pens, computers, paintbrushes, chisels… whatever your medium, and choose to not contribute to the path of destruction but to change the world in a way that is proven to be pivotal and lasting!

Respond with artwork #artrespond2016

A Realization...

"Moral reform is the effort to throw off sleep. Why is it that men give so poor an account of their day if they have not been slumbering? They are not such poor calculators. If they had not been overcome with drowsiness they would have performed something. The millions are awake enough for physical labor; but only one in a million is awake enough for effective intellectual exertion, only one in a hundred million to a poetic or divine life. To be awake is to be alive. I have never yet met a man who was quite awake. How could I have looked him in the face?"
                                                                                      - Henry David Thoreau

This desire for moral reform through the mere act of being 'awake' is a call to arms that dates all the way back to 1846. There is an even greater need now, for those who are able, to stand out among the slumberers. I feel as though the search for meaning in this life and the desire to satisfy the human spirit began as an answer to this call and now has become so abstract and 'spiritual' that people forget that it is the concreteness of this world that demands this exploration. They key to defining our physical existence on this earth and the relationships that we have with others and with nature and with God is to realize first that we are individual and alone in our experience. Not to say that we should all go live in a cabin in the woods by ourselves but that our personal experiences in these relationships is one hundred percent unique. How we relate to this physical world in unlike the experience of any other person, plant or animal. Our human qualities, our internal and external features, our past experiences and our anticipated goals all help to shape this individualized vantage point from which we view the world. Because of this, each person has the ability to effect change in a completely new way. In order to accomplish this change we need to wake up. We need to stop searching for the metaphysical meaning in this life and begin living tangibly in it. The first step toward absolute "wide-awakeness" is first realizing that we are asleep.

Drastic Measures Don't always work...

Change, for the right reasons can be a great and necessary thing. It teaches you to re-evaluate your current situation. Sometimes it can really make you appreciate things in life before you made the change. Sometimes, however, it puts you at such a distance from your old routine that you can look on it with new eyes and see it from a perspective that makes you realize just how stuck you were. Moving to Thailand was both of those things for me. I felt like the work that I was doing was significant and I was actually making some money doing what I love and then I hit a wall. I hit a wall creatively and strategically. I had started doing a lot of commissioned work for friends, and then friends of friends and it was spiraling in the right direction and then it came to a halt. My creative rut and my occupational rut came together and formed a trench with walls that needed scaling. I reached a point that most of us artists reach and had the brilliantly conventional idea that maybe I should teach. I can't seem to baby step my way into life altering decisions so I decided that the best way to figure out if I was a teacher at heart was to move to the middle of nowhere Thailand and teach english to five year olds. What I learned instead was that I have a ridiculous fear of small lizards and that I definitely do not want to teach five year olds. It was a great experience and I learned so much about myself and all of that reflective meandering but I wasn't on the same commitment level that some of my colleagues in the field were. Some of them are still there teaching and have found their way into great, high paying jobs and some of them went home and furthered their education. I went straight back to the bar. I was so broke and in dire emotional need of a comfortable, ego-stroking environment that I went straight back to place I clawed my way out of.

My Anuban kids (Kindergarten) learning english songs.
Alright, a lot of it was very rewarding.

Introduction

You are wrong if you think Joy emanates only or principally from human relationships. God has placed it all around us. It is in everything and anything we might experience. We just have to have the courage to turn against our habitual lifestyle and engage in unconventional living. - John Krakauer, Into the Wild

This blog, though applicable to many, is for you the painter, the graphic designer, the sculptor, the photographer, the woodworker, the writer, the film maker, and yes... even you the actor. It's for anyone who has been pinballing between the pursuit of their craft and paying the bills. It is NOT for the hobbyist. It is not for the CPA who likes to dabble in carpentry. It is not for the financial adviser who just picked up a paintbrush, or the day trader taking improv classes. It is for those of you who aren't quite sure how to live in this world as fully functioning, self-sufficient adult while also advancing your career in the arts. While I have a certain admiration for the 'starving artist' who is so committed to their work that they don't mind falling below the poverty line, I have a passion for good whiskey that runs deep. I enjoy nice dinners and good wine and an in-unit washer and dryer. This is not to say that I am above making sacrifices for the pursuit of something greater but I've met my Ramen Noodle quota for a lifetime. I have been in love with art since I can remember and knew that is where I belonged since eighth grade. We were working with watercolor in art class at school and I was working on a piece that I was so proud of. I couldn't sleep every thursday night in anticipation of Friday's class. I would literally have dreams about what I would do next with the piece. Still today I love the work that I create and I still sometimes dream about it. I will continue to create until I find my voice and what it is that I want to say in this world. The unfortunate reality is that we still have to pay our rent and our electric bills.

The service industry in particular is a world teeming with artists of all kinds facing this exact conflict. Working in a bar started out as a convenient way to support myself in my twenties while struggling my way through art school. Let's face it, you spend most of your twenties in a bar anyways, you might as well get paid for it. I got hooked. As a 21 year old I struggled and definitely had too much fun but I soon fell in love this industry and I wanted to learn. I wanted to know more. I grew up in a family that had always been employed in the hospitality industry and knowing the importance of good customer service and how to provide it is in my blood. It is something I am good at. I found that if you want it, there is a whole world of opportunity in this business. I learned how to make drinks from being an astute observant cocktail server and always asking questions and when I finally made it behind the bar I thought I had achieved something so great. There was, however, always another level of knowledge that I wanted to reach. I fell into this world head first. There are so many places, career wise, that you can go within this realm yet something kept me behind the bar. Although there were so many things that I thought I could improve and change on another level, I never went fully into management. Something held me back. We could get into my paralyzing fear of commitment here but I won't. Creating art was always my first love and I needed it. No matter how much I loved the bar industry it was just a supplement to get me where I needed to go in my creative endeavors. Instead of being a supplement, it became the focus. In my head it was to pay the bills while I pursued the other but somewhere it got all jumbled up.

Two years ago I came to this realization. I have always thought of myself as a skilled high-volume bartender and it was a gradual series of events and decisions that resulted in a low that totally caught me off guard. It made me realize just where I was in my life and how far I had veered off of the very ambiguous course that I had laid out for myself. It was some generic weekday that could have been any of the five and I was working a shift at a bar in downtown Chicago. I was in the process of listing off side item options to a guest at my bar, which I've done 7,000 times, yet somehow this time was different. I choked on the words coming out of my mouth. I was a talented, independent, twenty-nine year old female and the only reason the words 'Tater' and 'Tots' should come out of my mouth is if I'm serving them to my kids (Which I don't have and that will be filed away with the paralyzing fear of commitment and addressed at a later date). The work I was doing to supplement my art and become my priority and my original passion had been severely neglected. In order to rediscover this passion, drastic measures had to be taken, and that's how I found myself living alone, in Kamphaeng-Phet, Thailand.