A Drawing a Day Keeps the Therapist Away....at least it works for me.

I have been working on, and pretty much completing, a drawing a day. It has helped to improve my mood and gives me an outlet for all my energy and mind wanderings. Drawing has always been a source of comfort for me, a way of slowing the mind and simply being in the time and space. I feel connected to the world when I draw. I can feel the tension melting from my body, and energy flowing into my hands and onto the paper.

I am doing faces, close-ups mostly, of all of friends and family. This exercise is also giving me a chance to remained connected to these people. Drawing, literally making a mark, keeps me connected the art and to the person that I am drawing. I will add the drawings as I complete them, some are more doodles, others I am drawing from pictures without the use of anything but the picture.

I used to be very good at drawing from life, but since I was deep into my show I started using a projector to save time. It has been nice to work on my skill, to refine it again. I am still not even close to where I was my junior year in college, but I am hoping to get there again. It is easier for me to focus on the face, that has always been something that I enjoy drawing. So here are the first ones!

Bubbles, Laughter and Sunshine

Thomas Wolfe said that we “can never go home” and in college I used to agree.  Coming back to Wilkes never felt like “home”, it was just he place that my parents lived.  Asheville was home.  It welcomed me every time with an embrace of driving through a mountain and the pulling back to reveal a downtown thriving with people.  People were normal is weird and I don’t fear being a liberal.  But after spending 5 months back in Wilkes, I disagree with Wolfe.

            I have been dealing with a deep depression these last months, something that I thought was just from 1) graduating from college and not finding a job, 2) watching both parents lose their jobs, (thus fearing for my own future) and 3) worrying about getting into Grad school.  And now, with just over two more months of being here, I think that I am “home” one last time. 

            The depression I have felt is the same that plagued me in high school (minus some all literal scars).  Fear of being an adult, of growing up, of having to face this huge world all-alone.  Now I know the truth about my feelings over the last few months.  It is a primordial soup of actually leaving NC (the state that I have grown to love in spite of it’s red instead of blue blood), fear of grad school and if I can survive it (will it be worth it in the end?  A college degree has gotten me nothing.), feeding off of my parents depression on the economy (I knew I had a superpower… I want a new one), and last, the wonders of mental health failing in my own family in a variety of shapes and sizes. 

            Then I spent about a week in Asheville with Kris10 and Aly.  It was a week of wonderful food, laughing, reading, and just simply existing in a world that I do love and belong in. I did something productive for the first time since I finished my grad applications.  I took pictures, and not any pictures, pictures of adults being children.  It has served as a balm to my adulthood fears.  This wonderful creativity has not stopped yet.  Inspiration is still coming, consuming me, pushing me to keep drawing.  I have returned to my roots.  I am using my art as therapy again, using it to calm my fears and letting me know that if I could pull off 4 years of being an art major, (4 years of being told how awful I am) then I can get my masters and a job afterwards.  All I needed was to play with some bubbles in the sunshine with my best friends. 

 

There will be more to come on the new pastels.  So stay tuned.  I might have fallen off the internet-oblivion-cliff, but I back.  I am back fully in spirit and body, and back enough technologically to blog again.

            

And Away it Goes!

So, I did it today.  I sent in everything needed for grad school.  The application, a 10 page art paper, my portfolio, resume, and transcripts.  (Thanks for all the editing Kris10!!!)  It is all on it's way, zipping through the mail services to PA.  I still have an essay to write, one of those bullshit ones:  Who would I invite to dinner and why things.  It will not determine anything to do with acceptance, but it will give me a discount.  A much needed discount since this is all on me.

I am not worried necessarily, just anxious about the road ahead.  Grad school is going to be hard, I know this.  Once I get in I will need to find a place to live, and then move.  God I hate moving!  Granted some of my stuff has remained in boxes from the last move from Asheville to Wilkes, but I will still have to get all of my crap to PA.  But I am getting ahead of myself.  The first step is that acceptance letter, and then loans.  Yay! for being in debt!

Wilkes is the same- small and boring.  Still no job, so I will be working with my Dad in April.  Building cabinets somewhere.  I am looking foreword to spending that time with him, and the money will be pretty good.  But that's it. 

I have decided to brake up the monotony of my school-less life with making myself think that I am doing a show.  And since for every show you have to have a theme, I am starting to try and think through some of the stuff floating around in my head.  It is harder working here, no friends to suffer through modeling, no teachers breathing down my neck, so it will probably be some kind of self-exploration/ self-portrait kind of thing.  We shall see!  So expect some writings on that.  It helps with my process to write about it, and this is a blog.

Here's to inspiration!

Saving the World, and myself

I can't sleep right now.  I went to bed at 12 and slept for a few hours, but then I woke up and life took a weigh in and I am awake.  I can't sleep due to the over whelming problems of money and what I am going to when I graduate.  

I know what I want to do, but I feel that I staring into dark abyss of the unknown.  I never knew how much I relied on my parents money as a back up to my wayward life.  I am an artist, a career choice I made thinking that I would always have my parents to help me.  Now that I know that it is all on me, I am doubting everything.  Can I make a living as an art therapist in this economic state.  I am going to be in a career that is not a necessity in life, and I have to put myself in major debt to do it.  I know that I want this, that I want to help people, I want my art knowledge to enrich others life.  But I am feeling at a loss to be able to do.

I know that a part of this is simply because I am feeling sorry for myself, that I am just wallowing in the unknown of my future.  But i can't help it. I cant make it stop.  It consumes my every thought, except when I am in the studio.  My art has always been an escape, a way to make myself feel better.  I finally understand what Kristen meant.  I knew what she meant when she said Mark was her escape, but I never felt that way about anything.  But before, my art was all consuming, I did not have the time to think about my life without it.  

The next 2-5 years will solely be art therapy, not studio related.  That scares me.  Writing papers and reading texts is all that my life will be.  When will I have the time to do art when I have three papers to write, 100 pages to read and a job so that I can live.  Do I really have the strength to do this?  Am I really good enough.  The critic that I had at the end of last semester surly said no.  I do believe that I can do this, damn it I can do this.  I work 20+ hours a week and still maintain my GPA.  And if that means that my art life gets reduced to my studio, so be it.  And later my art life will be reduced to simply drawing at night, so be it.  It will still be a part of me right?  

I am nervous about the fact that I need spiritual growth, but I recently realized that my art is my religion.  I have never felt more myself as when I am drawing.  It was never casting, or painting, always drawing.  Always making my mark.  And the thing about drawing, it can go with me everywhere.

I already feel better about this.  It was a moment of weakness in the wee hours of the morning.  But I am still scared of the future.  But I can do it.  I did my senior show, and it was hard, but I did it.  I can do this and I will save the world.