A Bit About Everything

For the last few months, I've been banging my head against the wall that is visual art. My drawings are stilted, lifeless marvels that do little to offer any sense of creative expansion on my part. Expansion, in this personal sense, is akin to freedom. I've realized that there are very few things in my life that mimic what birds must feel when they take flight. I'm really trapped down here in the mud lately, the muck of social media, the miasma of facebook, the cacophony of twitter. I put earbuds in to drown out the angry people on the bus, the lecherous dudes on the street, the mewling pangs of screaming children in close quarters. I bend into myself. I blend in with the trees. I try to disappear. And then I remember writing. It was that little "write a poem about the ink you blew through a straw onto a white piece of paper and what it looks like" sort of exercise in third grade where it all began. I'd never heard of poetry until that day. I was really ne

As I've gotten older, I've tried to change myself out of "complaining" habits. I try to focus on the good in the world and merely work harder, or try to adjust my outlook when things get tough. So I hope that what I have to discuss with you next doesn't sound like it's coming out of the mouth of a prodigal daughter. There's something that has astonished and disheartened me as an artist as I've gotten older and been treated differently by both people older than me and by people I might consider peers. Occasionally, I will tout my own horn about projects I'm working on, though I try not to do so overly. Mostly, I try to bring it up if I think someone would be interested in the project I've worked on, or if they might be interested in doing similar types of work themselves. On occasion, either the person I bring it up to or someone else in the room will try to bring me down by making disparaging marks about the project I'm working on, or the

It never fails. I'm halfway through my shower or bath, when I get this flood of ideas and words and I need to run out of the shower wrapped in a towel and plop my fingers down on a keyboard to get some of this out. I know the science behind it and yet it always amuses me. It's not a habit that lends itself to a 9-5 work schedule. But maybe it's the habit that is beginning to help me understand where I actually get my joy from. I've been struggling to draw again. I'm having this strange realization, as I sit there countless times, both disgusted and horrified by my quality of drawings, that I'm not enjoying myself. I'm not enjoying creating visual art, and that's... also horrifying. Drawing is how I've defined a joyful activity for myself since I was between three and four years old. What is wrong with my brain that I find it utterly... boring now? Is this just a stage of the multipotentialite brain, that I find myself completely turned off by an ac

This morning I was thinking a lot about my successes, and how I tend not to give credit to myself when credit is due. In graduate school, a talented adjunct professor in watercolor called out my entire class on our melancholy disposition, and asked us why we couldn't rejoice in our achievements? Sadly, our society has implemented a "journey is not as important as result" clause on achievements, especially artistic ones. And artistic endeavors are so closely tied to emotion that it is not hard to see the detriment in holding this position. I've been thinking a lot about where I've come from, and most particularly trying to figure out how I came from Charlotte, NC from a highschool with almost no support for the arts, to working as a professional artist first in DC, then NYC and now across the country in Portland. Aside from my family and closest friends, there haven't been a lot of people to congratulate me or tell me that they're particularly proud of wh

(Artist Linked Here )  Anger hangs like a noose around those men filled to the brim with it. It hangs those who move forward in attempts to wield it. It burns those who are obsessed with it. Until they are husks devoid of understanding. Just scarecrows. Just mannequins. Without humanity. You move forward without sight, and you are blind Until you can love the loveless Until you can pity the cruel Until you can hold your own screeching and howling doomsday beast in both arms and kiss it on the mouth - Only then will you know anything at all.

Greetings! Today marks one of my favorite times of year: the August Full Moon. Named "The Full Sturgeon Moon", "The Green Corn Moon", "The Wheat Cut Moon", "The Moon When All Things Ripen", and/or "The Blueberry Moon" by different Native American tribes, this moon and this time of year always fill me with anticipation. It's upon this precipice that summer begins it's tumble into autumn, but the glow of the sun is still available to be celebrated. The light is my favorite, between late Autumn and early September, when everything from trees to grass to water becomes filled with golden fairy light. Since I've always been academically inclined, I could also be jones-ing for the fall because I want to buy new Lisa Frank pencils and a trapper keeper, but who am I to say. Whatever the reason, I always regain whatever motivation I've lost during the lazy, long summer months flies back in full force in September, and I end up