Moment of Clarity

As I gather reference photos for #the100dayproject 2017, some images I shot back in 2007/2008 really popped out at me.

 

 

 Prior to 2007, all my work dealt with female representation in art with visual shoutouts to some of my female artist foremothers, particularly Judy Chicago, Miriam Shapiro, and Kiki Smith with an homage to the countless centuries of female lacemakers who went unnamed. 

In 2007, I started trying to make work that talked about emotional abuse, and peripherally about human trafficiking, which I was just beginning to learn about. 

From 10 years away, these images are truncated, beautiful pieces of me, both literally (I'm lazy and have used myself as a model for most paintings because I like to limit human interaction if I can, particularly about personal things like artmaking) and figuratively.  In learning about art and design history, one thing we talked about was eliminating heads and faces from women in advertising because it dehumanizes and commodifies the gender.  It makes us less.  I don't do faces- old carryover creep out factor from reading The Illustrated Man- so I told myself that I cut the faces for practicality, but these were intended as reference photos which would be edited in paint.  I had never intentionally taken faceless photos before.  Having just come through another, similar period of depression, I'm seeing that I was making art about being less than whole.

One of the devices I used in cognitive therapy for my depression was identifying pieces of myself as Miranda and Charlotte.  Charlotte was the worst co-dependent depressed self loathing bits of myself, and I could assign behavior to her to help identify it.  Miranda was who I wanted to be (Sex in the City era....super original names, right?).  That duality, also tied up in my reading and writing on the Virgin and the Whore, defined that time in my life- it let me fight the depression.  But it also let to things like this. 

Long story short, I'm a slow learner, especially about myself.

Want to see some happier work?
Follow my 100 days project  in Insta here!

Reflections (or Remembering when I was Young And Dumb)

So, I wrote this great big long blog post, and then deleted it because I decided it was way too personal for people who were not me, and who I am not in a position to obtain permission from. 

Suffice to say:  I had a training class this past week, and I ended up unwittingly going to dinner with a bunch of people who were 24 and younger.  I mentioned my age (again, unknowing) and they spent the rest of dinner talking about how young I looked.  That, my friends, is the true line between the sneaking suspicions that you are old and knowing Damn, I am now old.  Fun times. 

Anyway, I have become all reflective (you know, more than normal) and I pulled up some really really old emails I have saved for personal reasons.  And as I looked at them, I am reminded of how naive I once was.  There was a time I believed only the best in people.  I sensed that I was never going to be a princess in the traditional definition of the world, and I thought I was super cool and ok with that.  But I wanted to be important.  So I found this gritty, dirty narrative in which to be the heroine.  Because I could be the shining savior girl.  I destroyed myself rather than learn to read between the lines. 

And it is awesome to look back at that and see how far God has brought me from that rebellious self important heart.  But it hurts to realize that there are so many people doing the exact same thing.

I was in this church recovery group once as a mentor, and this girl asked me why she should continue to follow God without straying.  After all, I had strayed and I had returned and I was forgiven, all of which is true.  Our God is a God with great big grace and loving arms to catch us when we fall.  And I couldn't answer.  In hindsight, I was still healing.  I didn't know what being better felt like and I had no perspective.  People should certainly walk through healing together but someone somewhere should be at least mostly whole in order to recognize when others aren't.  And I wasn't.  And it isn't like healed is a complete stated of being.  But it would be nice if the wounds weren't bleeding before I tried to stitch other people up and I wish someone had told me that (off topic, another rambling for another day.) 

I don't know if I could answer now, but I could at least tell her how much the process of being brought back from rebellion hurt.  Its like re-breaking a bone in order to set it properly to give full range of motion.  But one thing I gained/lost in the experience is the ability to hope for a person when I can see through the lines of their story.  I have to constantly be reminded by God that He saved me when I was off the rails crazy and He can save anyone.  I honestly believe saving someone lost is easier for Him then breaking the rebellious.  And that rebellion is not something I cherish in my heart as fun times.  It sours some of the good things He has for me still because they bear the taste of that rebellion.  It takes so much time for things to taste clean, as He intended again.  I hate my dumb trusting self of that time so much, but she had things I lack.  She believed in the ability of the lost and the liars to be redeemed in this fairy tale fashion, something I as a daughter of God should believe in through Him just as strongly, but I struggle with because I have seen the darkness and stupidity of my own heart. 

This is not what I intended to talk about.  I had this diatribe in my head about how awesome I am at reading between the lines of stories and how bad people show their true colors and that is true.  But I need to be better and reading ahead and imagining a happy ending.  I need to be better about believing with hope.  I learned a lot by being young and dumb.  God could have taught me the same things if I had simply been patient and allowed Him to.  On the upside, I now no longer have to bear the burden of being anybody's hero, except my dog and all I have to do for that gig is open the door every once in a while or drop some food. 

On a related note, I should probably make some art.  The crazy seems to be hitting a breaking point, and a canvas should take some of that away.

This one time...

This one time I decided that this year I would reflect daily and do a blog post weekly.  It's week 3 of 2015 and that has crashed and burned, but I have decided that perhaps I should not give up so easily. 

So I'm sitting on the couch with the dog, watching whatever autoplay on hulu brings up (Autoplay is both a blessing and a curse.  I'm *totes* the first person ever to have that realization right?) and I realize that I don't LIKE to do anything lately.  I'm indifferent toward everything.  Maybe it's just the season, maybe it is that I'm tired, but I don't at all like that in the back of my head, there is a list of things I need to do and should do, but nothing that I want to do.

Once upon a time (and still my first instinct) is to shout The Depression!  It closes in!  I shall battle it with the sword!  But I think at this point in my life, in this case, that is simply a comfortable, non-challenging answer.  Yes, I still need to guard against that- it would be easy to let apathy and laziness pull me down into depression.  However, what I think is fueling my apathy in this case is a profound feeling of not enough time. 

My husband often tells me that everyone feels this way and I need to get over myself.  That is probably completely true.  But lately I feel like there isn't even enough time to start on something that will make me happy.  And worse yet, if I do start on it and -heaven forbid- can't finish it in one evening or one weekend (or it prevents me from doing somthing that prevents our apartment from smelling like the trash can or the litter box), this thing that I really really wanted to do and was excited about becomes yet another panic inducing item on my to do list.  And the cycle begins again. 

So how do I keep the excitement-- how do I keep a project from continuing to be something I ReAlLy!! want to do?  How do I stay motivated and not lose myself in this giant labyrinthian to-do list? 

No seriously.  I'm genuinely asking. 

And I know I don't have a readership and I'm pretty sure I should be asking this in prayer but, spoiler alert, prayer also feel like a giant item on my to do list.  So does playing with my dog.  What the effff do I do about this? 

Meanwhile, to remind myself there is hope and light in the world, here is a dalek scarf I made::

2015: The Year of the Awesome

I haven't posted in over a year and nobody cares but....next year I'm blogging.  It's happening.  So that I put something, even if it is just a bad blog, out in the world.  This counts for the last week of 2014, so technically it is not a new year's resolution, so maybe I won't count down until I break it.  Maybe..

Check back with me in a week.

Happy Christmas!

Thank God for Pinterest and Poverty

Not really poverty.  But my husband and I are going through a tight money time, you know, college student tight (what happened??? I graduated 7 years ago- how did I not equate marrying a later-in-life college student to going through this again? lol way to think think things through).  So as a result, I'm becoming college student creative to get things done--in a way I didn't have to when I was there myself.

I went through college before the credit crisis, and I worked a lot to fund my schooling, so banks just loooooved to give me credit.  I never really thought about it before, but I never worried about not paying my bills or not having money or waiting for cash from my parents.  Cash from my parents was always a nice bonus, and don't get me wrong, I *always* panicked when my credit card bill came.  But ulitmately, I worked, and I enjoyed the luxury of being able to go buy materials and books whenever I needed to-- as long as I got out of work before the stores closed.

It made college different for me than for a lot of students, particularly my fellow art students. Already prone to being an over-prepared hoarder, I had professors who taught all these great alternate media and encouraged experimentation.  And I hated running out of this that I wanted for how I wanted to do things.  I rarely had to figure out how to finish something when I ran out of materials or money.  I graduated with a creative degree and I certainly developed my creativity, but only in a limited spectrum.  I have a vivid memory of walking into a studio and talking to another student who was figuring out how to unify a series in which, on the first two or three paintings, she had covered the entire canvas in gold leaf, corner to corner, 3 inch square by 3 inch square.  They were lovely.  She then ran out of gold leaf with 1 painting left.  I didn't understand then why she didn't just go buy more.  I do now.  There was no more money.

I still have a lot of the extra materials I bought in college, buried somewhere under the materials I have accumulated since.  Must admit-- I *may* be a material girl.  Or a material whore, whatever.  Lots of great ideas float around in my head and I rush out to buy all the stuff for it and then it languishes because I run out of time to make whatever it was.  Often because I have rushed out to buy all the stuff for the next idea I have.  Same thing in my kitchen---tons of spices and mixes and ingredients, lots of peanut butter sandwiches eaten. 

For the last month, there has been no excess to buy materials.  Or crazy amounts of extra food for the three hour cook time recipe I found for every night of the week (we have plenty of money for food, but I stand in the grocery store and look at my cart and know that i know that i know I will not cook all those meals before the food spoils).  And I'm going crazy.  For the first 2 weeks, I could hear my soul screaming 'you're crushing my creative spirit!  I will never be an artist if you don't let me go buy the stuff to do this thing I thought of-- I can't write it down and do it later, it will not be as good!!  How could you let yourself get in this situation where you would do this to me?!?!?!?!'

Then last week, I looked at the pile of stuff in my living room (I have piles everywhere, organized priority.  If it is really important, I leave it where I will trip on it.  Priority B goes on top of usable surfaces, Priority C on non-usable surfaces, directly on top of priorities D-J.  Priorities K-S are partially under there also, having once been priority J or above, and then having toppled over because spray paint, involved in almost every project, is in a round can specifically designed to not stack well.  Especially after I cannabilized the cap for another project.  Priorities T-Z an neatly packed in boxes covered from the inside in spray paint.  I wonder why that is??) and decided, perhaps, if I couldn't buy stuff I could use some of the stuff I already have.  Shocker, right?  An artist making things?  I was pretty sure my art degree qualified me to make informed purchases, because I have done that quite successfully for 7 years.

And it feels better.  Turns out it may not have been my creative soul screaming at me to buy shit.  Imagine that.  May have been my laziness.  May have been the 'ooooo shiny' distractedness every artist has.  But the end result was that I was accumulating and not creating.  I had realized this in the kitchen slightly sooner.  I just hadn't applied it to everything else.  And much to my husband's chagrin, I still have prioritized piles everywhere.  But most of them are in process now.  Side note?  Spray painting things right (i.e. so they neither run nor permanently bond to the stuff around them) takes for. ev. er.  but I'm getting excited about finishing projects and deciding if they are worth trying again and improving and making more my own.

I feel hopeful about making things and having real ideas of my own again.  And my credit cards will be just fine without me.

Characters

A long time ago, a counselor warned me that I was not living life but rather watching over it, narrating it as it goes by.  I didn't see that as a problem then--I would not say I had truly lived life at all up to that point, and witnessing it so very closely at last felt a lot like living.  Sometimes I feel the depression encroaching again, and instead of being so very grateful to be near life, I painfully miss living it. 

I can't explain where the change begins or where it ends.  I don't know when I stopped observing life and started living it, or why that stopped coming so easily.  But I feel very overwhelmed and far away.  In these moments, it becomes second narture to narrate and observe again, compare life, deconstruct life, scream at life but do everything but live life. 

I suppose selfishly I hope this will make it easier to make things again.  After all, seeing through the lens only should make it relatively easy to mimic the lens.  But what about my friends my dog my family my husband my God?  What happens when I step out permanently this time?  They will notice, they already have.

I read Where the Heart Is.  I used to stop every time that movie came on lifetime.  It is one of a very short list of books that translate perfectly into movie form.  Having read the book, I don't think the movie missed anything-- if anything, the characters are richer (except for losing Americus's menagerie).  And I think of how Novalee simply is in most of the story.  She doesn't think about being too much or too little, she simply is and does and provides and makes this incredible life out of nothing, so grateful for the tiny outpourings of a million strangers, and never worries about being less than until the last moment.  And then of course she panics and sends Forney away but it is all so very perfect, and you don't realize until she does, sitting in that car outside the motel, that she considers herself less.  And you never think about how incredible it is that she doesn't pass an ounce of that to her little girl, no matter how deeply it is ingrained in her.  I imagine after she declares her love to Forney she never again worries about being less and simply lives.  I suspect Lexie also simply lives and basks in her good fortune at having made a family out of luck and a genuine heart.  How do these women stop themselves from getting lost as so many of us less fortunate get lost?  Or those as unfortunate, for that matter?  How do they neither become paralyzed in self loathing and fear nor become complacent and live of the system? 

Why can I not learn to become unbroken in the way they are unbroken?

And why can I not frame my life without a story from another's mind?

Why do I not live my life as fully as characters on the page of a book?

I know.  I don't want to put in the time.  I still see that regrowth as time lost, time that would be more productive if I were already fixed, not in process.  And I know how very stupid that is, yet I yell because, I don't know, maybe fixed me will come lead current me and the time lapse will close in the paradox?  So what do I do to jolt myself into mental presence and stop narrating?

Evidently, I narrate louder and pray that that works.

Grown Up

I know this isn't entirely unusual, but I spent my entire childhood wanting to be a grown up then spent the last several years as a grown up wishing to be a kid again.

I then noticed that being a grown up is actually kind of more fun.

I'm happy to finally be one.


When I was a kid, sure, there were chores and rules, but essentially, I did whatever I wanted.  Which, after the age of 12 (thanks to orthodics and some se-r-ious blisters) was sitting on my butt alone and reading.  Until I couldn't be around people (much) anymore because I felt so very awkward in the real world, acting on my own.  I didn't want to grow up because I didn't want to have to interact and go to work and not live in those little worlds defined by other people.

After I grew up, I moved in and out of the real world, grown up land.  I could function when I had to, but I chose to live in worlds created and defined by other people.  I think the reason I did that was because I didn't believe I could define a world myself.  I thought that I lacked the power and the skills and the money and the time and the drive.

But I don't.

And that is pretty stupid to live by.

And guess what?  Eating my vegetables tastes better (and my teeth don't feel gritty like when I subsist on sugar) and I feel better.  And my back hurts less if I don't lie in bed and watch TV all day.  And I like people.  I like my friends and my family.  To be honest, I always have but I was pretty sure they didn't like me.  But guess what else?  They seem to.  And paying my bills sucks, so do doing the dishes and keeping the house clean, but I like my life better if they are.  And best of all?  It's MY life.  Not a screen writer's.  Not an author's.  Not a fictional character's.

And not an intangible dream.

And not an impossibility.

Don't ask me why I didn't like being grown up before.  The whole point of growing up is that you aren't powerless anymore.  And I didn't get on board with that right away.  But I think I'm there now.  Of course, I have the attention span of a fly sometimes, so I might need to put a post it on my computer to remind myself.  But honestly?  That frittata that I just made myself was both healthy and delicious.  So maybe it's worth being an adult, so I don't 'have' to microwave all my meals :)