Writing helps my sanity.

It helps me process emotions and sift through all the thoughts that pile up during work days.

Sometimes I feel a lot of clarity after writing.

Sometimes just relief.

There’s a lot I want to talk about which I need an outlet for. I want to share more about my perspectives, process, inspirations, and different things I enjoy—maybe even things that aren’t directly related to art (but also kind of are).

These posts aren’t going to be polished, probably. I’ll be writing before bed sometimes. I’m excited to see how this evolves.

My parents were both English majors, so from day one I was nurtured to enjoy reading and telling stories. I feel gratitude for having many of my oldest faint memories taking place in libraries having stories read to me.

My brother and I were encouraged to entertain ourselves by writing stories on the back of used copy paper Dad brought home from work. Before we could write ourselves, we’d have them dictate the books for us. I wrote a whole series about the “Little Space Alien,” who was a surrogate for myself. Each book was an episode about something that was going on in my life (for example: “Little Space Alien Celebrates Hanukkah”).

I really grew to loathe essay writing in high school and college. I still adored reading and discussing novels and poetry in English class, but the essays were a nasty means to an end of “getting the A I needed.” I found myself trying to just regurgitate words on the page as fast as I could in the way I was taught. I did my best to make it fun, but I really hated it.

I’m reminded of the quote by Douglas Adams, who’s one of my favorites:

My rebellion against stale essay writing would also get channeled in my sketchbooks.

From 2011-2015, I attended the Cleveland Institute of Art. Along the way, I was exposed to philosophers, thinkers, critics and their cultural theories. I was breaking down and expanding my understanding of the world, trying to compute so much new information. I struggled to figure out what was important for me to pay attention to.

It all seemed so IMPORTANT.

What nuggets of wisdom were going to be the key to get me an “A” in life??

The result: I remember feeling so much confusion and insecurity when it came to the way I’d talk about myself and my art.

I don’t believe this is the fault of college, and I’m not anti-intellectual. But I noticed that I was adopting a voice to express myself and talk about my art that wasn’t fully my own.

Looking back on the young woman I was, I feel compassion. I was desperate to be seen as good enough, smart enough, talented enough—to be right in my thinking, articulate and deep like the thinkers whose texts we were assigned to read. I was desperate to have my intellect find a solution to an emotional problem.

What I didn’t know (and was going to learn through slow, painful realizations) was that twisting my voice in order to be accepted and approved of is the worst thing I could do in life.

After having years of distance, I realize that the part of me that reads philosophy, theories and big critical ideas isn’t the same part that’s making artwork. The part of me that’s making artwork is all about intuition and operates on emotional impulses--it’s as real as my body. It embraces messiness, vulnerability, and knows that it will flow where it wants to, free from critical judgment.

And that brings up another reason I want to start a blog: finding my voice.

My desire is to make one post per week, but I don’t want to be hard on myself if life gets in the way. I want to have the most fun I can. If I start to feel a sense of dread or obligation around these, I’ll know I’m slipping back into old patterns of people-pleasing and trying to be perfect.

Inner voices are coming up with reasons why I shouldn’t do this:

It’s wrong for me to be sharing so openly from a personal perspective about my art practice. My writing style should be more analytical and emotionally detached, like the fancy art school graduate person I am.

This is so arrogant and narcissistic of me to share about my life and think that it’s worth reading. You’re really not that interesting.

I shouldn’t be writing my ideas; I should be expressing them visually like a *real* artist.

Fair enough, Inner Critic. But I’m going to ignore you and do this anyway.

So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years—

Twenty years largely wasted, the years of l'entre deux guerres

Trying to use words, and every attempt

Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure

Because one has only learnt to get the better of words

For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which

One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture

Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate

With shabby equipment always deteriorating

In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,

Undisciplined squads of emotion. And what there is to conquer

By strength and submission, has already been discovered

Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope

To emulate—but there is no competition—

There is only the fight to recover what has been lost

And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions

That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.

For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.

I want to end by sharing a quote from T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets which I love (“East Coker, V”):