I've recently become a consistent visitor of the Art Prof's social media spaces. This month she posted an "art dare" to her followers to create a drawing, without human faces, based off of the phrase "your future self." Since I'm in a period where I've slowed down production and am focusing more on restructuring, I decided to join in on the art dare. Inspired by some feedback from a recent art critique and reading several of the Art Prof's blog posts, I've been trying to readjust my approach by organizing my thoughts and ideas before beginning a new piece by starting off with a mind map. Here is a mind map of my future self for the art dare:
From there, I took a few points from the map to think of an image for the final drawing. Although I thought that all of the points in the map were authentic to me, what stuck out to me were the points about being old, sick and alone. When I think about whatever my future self might be, I don't tend to dwell on overly fantasizing or romanticizing about it. Doing so seems like I'd be setting myself up for disappointment. Instead I tend to think more about what's inevitable or most likely to happen. Death and deterioration, though a macabre train of thought, is what seems more real to me. Those are the only things that I know will happen as I get older, one or both of those things. I don't know if I'll be alone or singular when that happens, but it seems like a likely scenario because that's where I stand right now in my life. That's what's real to me at the moment, so it's not hard for me to imagine that in my future and I do not fear it. The examples of older people in my current immediate circle would have to be my parents. Though my mom and dad are in completely different circumstances, I think that I may be slightly more influenced by the hardships that my mom faces with her ailing body. I've seen what she goes through firsthand and I hear about details sometimes when we chat on the phone. Although she does have family members that live nearby to help her when she needs it, she mostly deals with it alone. She lives alone, and fiercely clings to her independence as her body slowly fails everyday at the hands of a debilitating disease. I bet most people assume that such a fate would never be placed on them, or at least they don't think about it much. However I have an acute awareness of the fact that none of us are too special to be spared any unfortunate occurrence, so I've become quite comfortable with the thought of my body eventually breaking down in some way, even if it's relatively mild. It's hard to break myself away from that thought when I envision my "future self."This art dare was a challenge for me for two reasons: 1) I'm not always comfortable/confident with drawing, and 2) I couldn't use any human faces. The second point was extremely difficult because the human figure is my favorite subject, portraits too. I feel a little bit crippled if I can't incorporate it in some way. Well, I took it a step further and challenged myself to not use a human figure at all. What I came up with was this drawing:
I don't know what it's like for anyone else who lives alone, but for me I spend a lot of time in the bathroom. Besides the obvious functions and reasons, we associate the bathroom as being a very private space. Even though I live alone and have x amount of square footage to deal with myself, the bathroom is still where I go to be alone and internalize. I experience the most moments of self-examination in there. Perhaps it's the mirror that does it, or the meditativeness of standing in the shower. With a bathroom as the scene to this piece, which in my mind depicts a certain solitude, what made the most sense to me as a way to show a living body in deterioration was to use blood. Hey, I'm only too happy to be able to find a way to incorporate blood into any of my pieces. It felt natural so I just went with it. Then of course I showed an abundance of medication which seems to be synonymous with getting old and sick. I really tried to consider composition with this drawing to set off a sort of eeriness to it. I wish that I was much better at drawing from my imagination, but either way I thought what I ended up with was still compelling enough. Considering that this is the first time I hopped onto an Instagram "art challenge," I thought the experience was great. I enjoyed the task of being given an objective and a deadline and then be able to make something out of it that is meaningful to me. I also appreciated that I got to try out a new approach to creating a piece by starting off with the mind map. I think that I'm going to keep that up. Or try to.Do you have an image in your mind of your "future self?" Where would you want to be? What do you fear about the near or far future in your lifetime? Please feel free to chime in in the comments.
The Stranger Show
My latest project found me paired up with an AP Art student from Hug High School here in Reno. We were submitting a piece for The Holland Project’s annual Stranger Show. This year’s theme was “Identity and Place.” The idea behind the work was all on my partner, Jeanette, I just helped pull it out of her! We started with a little bit of word association to come up with imagery that fit her interests and her sense of identity. To be so young, Jeanette has a very open mind and contemplates a lot about the ways of the world and what she thinks it should be. We also thought it’d be great to add zodiac elements to the painting since she feels a strong connection to astrology. Afterwards we came up with a few sketches then worked together painting parts of the piece. I was so happy with the way that our collaboration turned out, and I was in awe of her dedication to the work. For this project I had to push myself to work with materials that are vastly different than what I normally use. I even put together the canvas we painted on, something that I haven’t done in years. Because of this project, I was thinking that I might go back to making my own stretched canvases again…but we’ll see. Overall it was a satisfying experience for me.
Hopefully my mentee felt like she learned something from me and was challenged by the project. I enjoyed working with her so much! I felt very lucky to have been paired with her. There were several other artist groups that worked alongside us week by week who produced outstanding work! Last week was the show opening and it was amazing. It was obvious that everyone worked hard. I didn’t save many pictures, but there were professional photographers at the event that captured everything. I’ll share a few on here when they are posted.The show is up through Oct. 28th, so if you’re in Reno be sure to visit The Holland Project’s gallery and check it out!
Artist Talk: ever-present
I've finally gotten around to adding selected works from my show, "ever-present," from this past June. The work won't be new to those who follow me online or have seen it in-person, but to anyone that's been waiting for a more in-depth post about the show - I thank you for your patience. I have so much gratitude and appreciation towards everyone that took the time to visit Reno Art Works during the show's run, as it was a presentation that I took very much to heart. I think this was probably the first time in my burgeoning art career where I felt very emotionally attached to how people were going to respond to the work. Up until this show, I think that I've been able to maintain a healthy level of detachment: invested enough to care about my work and to share it, but not so much that my ego would be bruised if someone didn't like it. I think that I was so nervous and affected this time because of the subject matter. With ever-present, I directly addressed some intense emotions from points in my romantic life. I've certainly touched on it before in my work but to be honest, I didn't delve that deep within. I deliberately kept the topic close to the chest because for so long I wasn't sure that I wanted to have that level of transparency with the world. Perhaps I was ashamed of those feelings. Showing vulnerability is one thing, and it is a major key to the work that I do, but I don't want to appear weak. It's all fun and games until someone breaks your heart and you're told that you have to "just move on." Then what?There's something about growing up as a black woman that makes one feel like you can't, or shouldn't, express sorrow or anguish over losing a romantic partner - especially if it's a man. "Niggas ain't shit," "Dick comes a dime a dozen," "I can do bad all by myself,"...you know the drill. There's a sort of pressure to always appear like you have it together and that you're impenetrable. And if you're stuck on a man, then well...you a weak bitch. Plain and simple. I don't think that I'm weak, I just have an extremely hard time letting go of special people. And I don't want to be judged negatively for that. Suffice it to say, I don't have an easy time admitting or working through heartache. I have very supportive friends and family that I can talk to, but shit, there's a deep seeded sadness over some of these experiences I've had that I would never express to them even. It made sense to me to keep a lot of my struggles with matters of the heart to myself. However, over the years I've learned that sometimes no amount of pulling it together and shoving on can change how you feel about someone. In a case like that the best you can hope for, is to make different decisions moving forward. Because if you were able to reach that level of openness with a person, where any action they take can affect you that deeply, you can't take that back. There's no casually glossing over an experience like that. They're a part of you now, bruh, whether you get over the person or not.As with a lot of people, I find myself confused yet fascinated by romance and the part it plays (or doesn't play) in my life. Since moving 3000 miles away from my hometown almost 4 years ago, I've hit the six year mark of being without any committed romantic relationship and I entered my 30s. I say that in order to provide some context to where I am in life, not to pity myself, for the record. Though I don't consider myself to have a particularly strong desire to couple-up (but I'm mostly open to it), I do find myself constantly making observations about couples and singles, and my place within the ever-changing dating landscape. I write about it in my journals A LOT. There are many years-worth of journal entries where I've written a plethora of positive, forlorn and complicated passages about my romantic life and what I've picked up from observing things around me. I mean, it's probably obsessive at this point. Those journal entries provided the backdrop for the work in ever-present. I think the combination of the isolation I struggle with in my (fairly) new home, navigating through the end of a romantic involvement that was a game-changing experience for me and falling into heavy self-reflection through old journal entries brought me to a tipping point. Just writing it all out or talking about it wasn't good enough anymore. I decided that it was finally time to start addressing some of these things through color.
So did being more intentional about expressing these private thoughts and emotions through my art help me get over some kind of emotional hump? Did I learn anything? Yes and no. I did learn to be less afraid to be this open in my work. Extending myself in this way allowed me to connect with others on a deeper and fulfilling level. The outpouring of compassion and tenderness I received in response to the work was staggering. I suppose I knew that no one would be outwardly rude about it, but I didn't expect as much positivity either. Opening up and sharing myself, made strangers feel safe to open up to me in a way that probably would've never happened any other way. To be able to connect with people through my artwork, and to have those moments to offer comfort to one another about very personal and sensitive topics regarding matters of the heart was a life-affirming experience. I think I must have needed that as much as they did. I am thankful to all of the visitors for being so understanding and kind to me, they made it easier for me to get through it and to feel encouraged about what I'm doing as an artist. It's an incredible feeling to know that I can offer a perspective that people find refreshing, authentic and relatable. I definitely have a little more relief knowing that the personal experiences I touched on were not uncommon. The only detractor is that I wish all of this helped me improve my current outlook about my personal dealings with romance/dating. I still struggle a lot, and although I discovered that art-making can be a good outlet for me, just having a release isn't enough. But I suppose that's a completely separate issue that I won't talk about here. At any rate, please visit the gallery page for ever-present to view some of the stand-out pieces with accompanying captions where noted. The captions are either direct quotes from my personal journals (in the same vein as my short "Slump" series), quotes from personal conversations or were found.As always, I would love to hear what you have to say about the work, this blog post or if you have something on your heart that you need to bare. Leave your thoughts in the comments section.