Vulnerability

There is something very vulnerable about art that I had not experienced fully in quite a while. Certainly I am an artist in my own rights, as is anyone else who claims the title. I  guess anyone who dabbles in any form of the arts can plaster that word to their forehead and wear it with pride. I have stuck to my own artsy meat and potatoes: writing,  very elementary photography and graphic design, my funky version of home decorating, and my personal style. From time to time I even sketch. Notice what didn’t make the list? Painting. Collages. Specifics like acrylic, watercolor or oil. Soooo here’s a question: Why did I sign up for 15 days of art on a 8×8 canvases to be submitted for public display, complete with showings and even facebook previews? No real answer.

My assumed retrospective answers: 

1.)The art co-op putting this challenge on is new and cool. That means I want it to stay in my town, ergo I should support it.

2.) I was still totally jacked up on that creativity workshop I attended. Creativity can be viral.

What I should really figure out is why I wrote down watercolor, acrylic, etc. when the registration form asked how I would attack the canvases. I think those may just have been words I know associated with painting. I now think they must have realized I was out my element. Thanks to Google Chrome and its red squiggle lines, as of about 27 seconds ago, I now know I have been misspelling “acrylic.” Apparently there is just the one L….

Friends. Let me throw you some knowledge. Watercolor painting, the good kind anyway, is rather like ice skating. Maybe that is a shitty analogy, but let me tell you despite however simple, smooth and easy it looks, one misstep and you land on your face wondering what the f went wrong. Moral of the story: you can’t just pin a bunch of pretty watercolors, borrow your kid’s yellow rectangle of Crayola paints and whip up something majestic. Yes, it’s obvious now. At the time, I was near tears. Getting on the art shop’s facebook page and seeing photos of work from the fabulously talented artists joining me in the challenge didn’t help so much.

I re-assessed my sitch. I started pinning and googling tutorials rather than just art by pros. I even went out and splurged on 5 new one-L, cheap-ass acrylic paints from Joann’s and one package of cheap brushes. Don’t worry, I didn’t buy the cheapEST; That’s good, right? I painted, I cried, I took care of a sick baby, I painted I glued, I went to work, I painted, I worked on Color by Amber, I took the baby who isn’t actually a baby to the doctor, I painted, I glued, and I worked. And then I finished. Working on a time crunch and specific guidelines, I had to turn in things I would have preferred to not. I don’t get choices. I don’t get to edit them. I  don’t get to stand there and tell every person who looks at them that I am new. I tried. It’s hard. I don’t even get to make jokes, or mock my own work. I just get them up. Displayed. For the public.

All 15 pieces by all 30 artists will go on sale for Small Business Saturday for $30 each right after the Showing and Wine on the night of Black Friday. I am scared that mine will just linger and linger. All of them as the others get wrapped up and taken away to new homes. My art, sad little pound puppies.

So what is the difference between this and any of my other art and self-expression forms? I have more control over each of them. I don’t take photos of myself, family or home looking a hot mess and plaster them all over the internet. I choose carefully, edit and post where I please. I write, I edit, I write, I edit, and sometimes I delete. I create, I edit, I decide. That is the general work flow of my arts. In this challenge, I created. I kind of edited, or at least as much as my talents and time allowed. And I let go. That is when vulnerability blooms.

For what it’s worth, I think this is good. I spend so much time creating my reality: editing my photos, touching up my make up. It is okay to just let something raw out. It may be judged. It may be judged harshly. I may not want to even attend the showing, but I wouldn’t take back this experience for anything. I know the feeling of creating something new and feeling proud of it. I know the moment my mind switched to seeing art and inspiration as applied to painting.

If you dabble in any artistic form, you probably know that mind’s eye that develops. From what I can tell, it happens in all forms of art. When I see beautiful elements that would show great texture and still allow for great lighting my mind will sometimes envision that place as a back drop. My mind constantly converts my daily experiences into bloggable writing. I know an interior designer who actively has to restrain her vision else she mentally (perhaps harshly) completely redesigns every home she visits. A dancer I knew used to generatechoreography or even an entire music video for songs she heard. About 11 days into the 15 day challenge, I looked at a particular bridge and saw it as a painting. I took in the background landscape, architecture, and negative spaces of the bridge. and I saw it all. I transformed from someone who ignorantly just tried to mimic art far above my level to seeing my own inspiration. I developed a greater appreciation for the talent and skill of others. And I did it. I committed to something new for 15 days. We’ll call that winning. 

My art, Left-Right, Top-Bottom:

Untitled, Cups, Girl on Fire, Cup o’ Joe, Hipster Belle, Pink Dogwood, Crush City, Adventure, Fancy, Master of the Universe, Untitled (2), S, Birdies, Horned Sunflower, & Put a Bird on It.