Tomorrow night, Friday Dec. 1st, Clearstory Arts will…what…premier? Open the show? What do artists say? I don’t know. In any case, my two pieces with “angels” in them will be in the Holiday/gift-giving show. My pieces don’t fit this theme at all. I even went to the meeting about the show and thought I was in the “spirit” of the thing and now I realize just really NOT. AT. ALL.
But that’s okay. I wanted to “get my work out there” and “be seen.” Likely few people will be draw to my work, but it is all me, different and weird, all that stuff about me I’ve heard my whole life, and I am proud of it. And I am very glad that it likely won’t sell because I can KEEP these canvases. They will be MINE, clear evidence that I have been working very hard these last three years. Which I have in fact–hours and hours and hours and hours and days and weeks and months. And this fall I decided to up things a notch and join a gallery and then this opportunity for being in an “un-juried” show came around (anybody who is part of the gallery can show) and there you are. And here am I.
But I have been SICK the past week and even before that I was pushing and pushing to get everything done when I wasn’t really ready and everything is rushed and feels sloppy.
But isn’t that what I generally do?
Yes. I am a DIVE in type of person. I posses a kind of animal courage. Just go on and jump!
So I am jumping. Tomorrow night I will show up a bit late with my KN95 mask on (I am not contagious but when I cough I sound like a ground-zero patient) and I will buy a few things and gush when appropriate.
And if I see anybody looking at my work I will run and hide. Because it will probably be like reading my poems in public–whenever I have finished reading I am always very glad it’s over and want nothing more than to duck down a back alley and get away, far from the madding crowd.
People think writers want attention. Praise. And yes, of course I do. But at the same time everything about the process is incredibly embarrassing. This is not false modesty even though as I write this I feel like it is false modesty.
But no. It isn’t. Making art of any kind is so very personal. And opening yourself, allowing the tenderest flower of yourself to be seen, is exhilarating and humiliating. It enriches you, but it steals something from you too.
But not reading my work…that sucks, not because I want to be in front of a crowd but because I want to be heard. I wonder what having art on a wall will be like. It’s so weird, to move from words to this…whatever this is for even now I am in a strange place.
I was always a poet, clearly, but I ended up dissatisfied if I wasn’t also writing fiction and essays and novels. One form of writing was never enough and so I spread myself too thin between three genres and probably hobbled myself in the process. Why is it that I was never unable to just settle down and write poems with my whole heart?
Now I am making visual art and there is no theme. No focus. I am all over the place. And the art is virtual. It exists inside machines and on screens, in a nether region between my fingers holding a stylus and an image in a file on my computer. These two canvases are the first hands-on “pieces” I’ve had. And if someone did buy them, what would that even feel like?
And for that matter, if I do get any attention for my art, will I be able to bear it? I don’t mean my ideas about how to make money from art–I will be making cards to sell and drawing up things for specific purposes–I mean getting attention for making a beautiful thing that someone else ALSO finds beautiful.
And how is it that I ended up here anyhow? Well, I have an answer for that. It is my family. Each of us is/was drawn toward the creative in multiple ways. My mother did, literally, everything–quilting, painting, drawing, singing, writing. My brother–music, crafting, metal and wood working, crocheting, basket weaving. My father, (also a metal and wood worker and musician) I have found out at this late hour, has long “heard” poems/stories on the air just as I always have.
I guess you can’t escape a legacy like that.
And mentioning the music–I am going down to my brother’s care home on Dec. 5th (if I’m well enough) to play Christmas carols on the piano. I played the piano at church when I was growing up. That is something I miss so much. It will be nice to revisit it in this way and my brother will be so proud. I am not a good piano player, but I am the type of player who can sit down and please people, make them happy. And what could be better than that?
Okay. So tomorrow night I will pack my piano into my purse and play carols at the gallery. That would suit me just fine.
~r.
