This afternoon I took my most recent visual art creations and delivered them into the hands of my friend, Michelle Guerrerro Tolley.
It felt just like my other births: I was slightly disoriented right before I gave the final push. I know I saw, and hugged, and interacted with people I knew. I can see their faces and hear their voices, but just like when I had my human children, I am not entirely sure what was said or if I behaved in a civil manner.
I just know I had to give up these works of art that had been growing inside me, slowly showing themselves to the rest of the world, bit by bit.
My friend and Gallery Director at the Empty Space, Jesus Fidel, had a great idea for an art show. Inspired by lyrics by Tori Amos and an organization called RAINN (Rape, Abuse, Incest National Network) artists were called to create work using inspiration and imagery from songs Amos wrote about her own rape and finding her own voice again. My art is a combination of images from the songs married to other images that came up throughout the time between our first artist meeting and today's art drop.
Reminder: I have never completely bought into the concept of being a visual artist. I am a Mom who writes and occasionally acts (and works hard but never feels quite good enough there, either) and directs and sings and writes and performs poetry and splatters her creativity around but visual artist is something I generally leave for my more talented, educated and/or know-what-they-are-doing friends.
I wouldn't have even tried to create visual art if it wasn't for my beloved friends Jen Raven and A.S. Ashley. I felt so outclassed when I first started playing in this playground several years ago that I stifled my efforts a lot until this show, for many reasons, yanked at my core and I responded.
This is why I drove and cried this morning at the thought of letting my art go, let it be seen by others all the while the thoughts running through my head, "What if people don't get it?" and "What if the metaphors are lost to everyone?" and "What if it is plain old bad?" and "What if people point and laugh when I walk into the gallery?"
Last week I was in tears because of the steep learning curve I had to overcome as well as the steep comfort curve. The methods and styles I was choosing meant I got caught up in the how-to's. My eyelids stung when I asked my dear friend, Cameron, to recognize why I was so flustered - because so many times in my life I let the "but I don't know hows" to stop me and the story this art wanted to tell felt too big to be drowned by my fears.
The subject of the art simply grabbed me by my throat and opened it up, breathing the "oh yes you can's" into my fingers and pumping me up with injections of discomfort-overcoming-vaccinations. I fell in love with my heroine, my she-ro, a conglomeration of an "every girl" in the form of Johnny Gruelle's Raggedy Ann meets a Hymn Singing Tori Amos, You, Me and Her, over there, hiding behind the oversized glasses or carrying that violin case.
I don't have photos of the completed art yet - they will have to wait until the opening of the show (on July 2 and I won't even be able to be there!) but I am thinking I may blog more about the creative process and how it unfolded. It was such a wooing, so many synchronicities... and like the birth of my human children, something happens when we give birth that makes us want to share the story over and over and over again!
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© 2011
Julie Jordan Scott
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