high school, and my artistic growth

I went to my high school for the first time in over a year today to drop off some pieces for the alumni show.

First of all, I was amazed at my ability to remember all the random back-roads ways to get to it.

Walking through the halls was really interesting for me. All the 'gallery' walls were empty and plain grey, which makes sense, since it's the summer and all. I had a random burst of pride, knowing that my high school was so very art-oriented and encouraging, when I could have went to a regular zoned school and not had the same opportunities to grow.

I think the reason I'm feeling so nostalgic at the moment also has to do with the episode of 'Work of Art' I watched today (from last week). The artists had to create a piece about their childhood and how they realized they would be artists, and they could only use childrens' art supplies. Most of them didn't do too great of a job, just going with 'childhood' and 'art', only 2 did anything with a real personal concept behind them. I was disappointed with Abdi's piece; I liked his first idea, but oh well. The show was taped months ago, it's not like I can change anything...

Anyway, it got me thinking about my own childhood and what might've lead to my decision to pursue art. And, distressingly, I couldn't really think of any moments that stood out to me. Even now, the best I can come up with is in nursery school when we had to paint a large cut out of an apple red or green, and I used both because I thought it was more realistic. And in second grade, on some sort of leaf-related assignment, I counted the number of purple leaves (along with green, yellow, orange, red, and brown) because I had seen purple leaves. Neither of those events are very monumental, and are certainly not related to my current artistic pursuits.

I think I only started to really develop my own interests and talents in high school. I spent those 4 years focusing mainly on photography, with some figurative painting and mixed media thrown in. I was all set to major in photography in college, until the crit for 'opposites'. I had done 2 large 3'x4' grids of paper cranes, one black and one white. Torie suggested I should look into majoring in crafts or fibers, since lately I had been doing those sorts of oddball pieces. And it just clicked in my head that yes, that's what I want to do.

Recently I've figured out what I would love to do, though my mind keeps telling me it'll never work out because this is the real world. I want to make sustainable fiber art. As in, made from natural materials, like well-treated animals and organic plants, as local as possible. I feel it's a good mix of my strong environmental habits and ideas with my artistic interests and tendencies. The problem I see, though, is the expense of wanting to do it. Buying natural materials is always more expensive than synthetic, and when you factor in local materials it gets harder to find and more expensive.

Even if I could affordably get my hands on natural materials, my brain keeps telling me art is not a reliable or smart career choice - fine art especially. And while this isn't exactly 'fine art' it's far from commercial art. I want to be making art for myself in a small studio, but that's not a very reliable way to live. My brain started yelling about health insurance and dentist appointments and paying bills and affording a car and then I just feel like settling for some hourly job to make ends meet, which will likely kill me inside.

As much as I want to, being a professional artist just seems so terribly hard to live on. Then again, my self confidence isn't very high, even when I know I make good art when I put my mind to it.

Today I contemplated taking orders for embroidered shoes. People seem to like the fun patterns most hi-top shoe companies offer, and there's a small market for hand painted shoes, so I think there would be a similarly small market for embroidered shoes as well. But then I get bogged down with how long it takes, and how painful it can be for my hands, and in the end I decide it's just not worth it.

I feel like now I'm ranting...

Maybe I just need to actually make all those recycled jean things I've been meaning to do, make a dozen sock creatures, and sell all that on the Etsy account I got but have only used to buy one shirt.

[no relevant art today. though I did read another amazing bit of 'General Relatively' that had me smiling goofily the whole time. and blue did a bit of art for it!]