Leaving the Artistic Nest

I am lucky enough to be surrounded by amazing artist everyday.  We learn from each other and inspire one another, and are in a constant community of creativity.  But... I graduate in May.  One of my largest fears regarding graduation is just that.  I will be leaving my creative community.  I will no longer be working side by side with the people who know my work best.  I am constantly worried about how my work is perceived by others, as all artists are.  However, these people I have spent so much time with, know my work so well.  They know my true intentions behind my work.  What happens when I graduate, and my audience changes.  People who don't know me won't know what a butterfly means to me, not like my classmates.  I have to start to figure out how to make my work and my intention more 'readable'.  More than that I need to learn how to continue to create without constantly being surround by the creative atmosphere of an art school.

Artistic Coincidences: Part 2

I recently bought a caterpillar-to-butterfly kit online, one of the ones where they give you food and a cage and everything.  When the caterpillars came there where a total of seven.  As time went on they began to cocoon.  However, only six successfully made it to cocoon.  And after that, only five emerged from the cocoon to live as butterflies.  They lived in my apartment for almost a month; during that time I became very attached to them.  I would wake up in the middle of the night to the sound of their wings fluttering, I looked forward to seeing them after a long day; they became part of my life.  As I reflected on this experience I realized how telling the situation was.  I have always held my family sacred to me, and I often represent my family with butterflies.  The fact that only five butterflies lived represents each member of my family.  The fact that only five butterflies made it became more of an obligation rather than coincidence.  I knew that the butterflies had to become something much more than fleeting pets.  They needed to become part of my art practice.

Artistic Coincidences

My Grandfather passed away when I was in eighth grade.  The day of his funeral, I had a track meet, I was on a relay so I had to leave the funeral and go straight to the meet.  I thought a lot about the service on the drive to the meet.  I thought about how my mother lost a father, how my grandmother lost a husband, and I thought about how my siblings were handling loosing a grandparent for the first time.  I got to the track meet at the same time my relay was about to start, I hopped on the track and within a minute it was my turn to race.  I grabbed the baton from the girl before me and as I started my run around the track, I noticed a butterfly just ahead of me.  My grandfather loved butterflies and that is how my grandmother chose to memorialize him since his death.  As I continued around the track, the butterfly began leading me.  The butterfly flew the whole way around the track, and nearly crossed the finish line with me.
As I was reflecting on this story recently, I realized my interest in art directly coincided with the importance of butterflies in my life.  I started to become seriously interested in the art field when I was in eighth grade.  The same time my grandfather passed, the first major death within my close family.  Even though butterflies had not appeared visually in my artwork until college, I have always had a firm connection to them.   My art practice has always been connected to my family, I had never realized just how strongly.

Family Changes

Family Changes

Dealing with family is hard.  And I'm not just talking about "everyone home for the holidays in a house thats too small" hard, I'm talking about the “ever evolving relationships within a family” hard.  I come from an extraordinarily close family that has made me into the person I am today.  Both of my parents love and respect me and will do anything to help me and my siblings succeed.  And my siblings, even though we relentlessly pick on each other as siblings will, always manage to show that despite our differences, they understand my interests.

My siblings are athletes, I am not.

I am an artist, my siblings are not.

Eventually my art practice started to solely revolve around my family.  I became facisnated by the changing relationships that I held with each family member.  When you are younger the biggest disagreements you had with your siblings were which toys to play with; the biggest disagreements you had with your parents were how late you were allowed out.  But as you grow and mature these arguments change, especially when you are given the opportunity to learn and grow outside of the family dynamic.  

My siblings and I are very close in age, we all moved away to college within five years of each other.  And it has been my experience that college is truly the first time that you are able to think freely about how you want to form your adult life.  As I spent more and more time figuring out who exactly I was and what I valued in my life, I noticed that my siblings were doing the same.  And that we did not hold the same level of importance on certain things.  Whether it be politically or socially (as these happened to be the most pressing issues as of late).  Part of that had very much to do with where we went to school and who we surrounded ourselves with.  I am constantly surrounded by artists and those who think like me, same goes for my sister and brothers in their respective fields.  I was so caught up in my own growth and maturing, I forgot that they were trying to do the same.  

I definitely let this get the better of me at times.  I was so confused that they could not understand my way of thinking, without realizing that they were not there to witness my growth while I was forming these thoughts.   This goes both ways, I forgot that they now had their own lives outside of the intimacy of the family home.  Each one of them went through experiences that I will never be able to understand.  Which is AMAZING.  I often found that I had to remind myself that my interests and opinions were no better than theirs.  Mine were just different then theirs.

I don’t want this to sound as though I am mourning the loss of a close knit family.  Because we very much still are that family.  My siblings and I are fortunate enough to understand the importance of family, regardless of differences in ideals.  I will never be able to get my brothers to hold the same interest in my artwork, but they will never get me to understand sports.  

Families are about give and takes, and it took me longer than I care to admit to figure that out.  But now, knowing that,  I can only hope that the relationships that I hold with each sibling and parent continues to grow and benefit each of my family members.