Reflections
 In my younger years of dreaming what I would do in my life, my goal was to be a self-supporting artist, with clay as my medium. I knew little of where my life was about to take me. Every turn, every episode built my own vocabulary and references. Each experience added to my knowledge, whether it be in clay or other materials, or just a pure experience; it was logged for future reference. Interestingly enough, I reached my goal as a self-supporting artist, in fiber, and then fell into the love of teaching. I found my way home to share my love of clay to young emerging hearts at the very high school I had attended. It was a long journey…but it did get me to where I truly belonged. I know from my past experiences the energy and necessary elements that need to be in place to travel that road as a clay artist. I am now able to take my many personal experiences, travels, joys and wonders and communicate my stories in clay. It takes time to digest, discover, cultivate, and interpret the world in your own language, and so, I feel I am just beginning to emerge from my life′s cocoon. Life takes us on journeys we never intended. Our younger dreams painted pathways of immediate gratification…but it is our work at achieving thousands of hours of discipline and creative sweat that allows our work to successfully communicate our souls. I have discovered, I truly have a disease which causes my creativity to flare up at any time…and have been addressing it in whatever medium I have been exposed to throughout my life. Having lived many experiences, I am now focused in the wonders of clay. One needs many adventures and life experiences to be able to express themselves and report on their own history. My work is my attempt to share my passion. I believe that self expression is ART…so everyone IS an ARTIST and has something to share! We stop our ability for self expression, not because we are not creative…but because at an early age it had not been developed along with our other abilities in our lives. Think back to the time you brought artwork home from school to have your family hang it in the kitchen gallery…remember how proud you were, and how proud your parents were? Remember? We are encouraged to express ourselves through art…until we begin the reading, writing, and arithmetic part of our education…then the creative side gets much less focus and our academic studies are primary. When we reach middle school and begin exploring and developing our ideas and wanting to share them with others, we also find ourselves in one of the most self judging stages of our lives. We have our ideas but we just do not know how to express them with the level of creativity we reached in our lives. While all the other areas have been developed with our growth, art and creativity have been pushed by the wayside and our skills are that of our younger years. Who would be proud to show off their lack of ability? Who would dare try and risk their self-esteem at a time like this? And so we brush those ideas under the carpet and continue to focus on those things we are familiar with which bring us positive reinforcement. It′s that simple. When I meet people that tell me they have no creative bone in their body, it is they who never took the risk to try to communicate their ideas. Like all things, creativity needs practice and tapping into on a regular basis. Without creativity who would be our next inventors, or health professionals who find cures for plaguing diseases? Who would think about galaxies beyond? Who would come up with computer programs that make our lives so much easier? Who would even think in that direction? Art is as important as the air we breathe. BELIEVE in ART…and believe in yourself! Everyone holds an artist inside themselves…express yourself! |