“Art may be bad, good or indifferent, but, whatever adjective is used, we must call it art, and bad art is still art in the same way as a bad emotion is still an emotion.” In 1957, Marcel Duchamp spoke those words. He was right. If you feel compelled to do something, right or wrong, good or bad, shouldn’t you give it a chance? After all, you thought of it and it’s just as much of a part of your soul as anything else.
When I was younger, I lived on a military base with my mother and my step father and we moved all over the United States and then we moved to Ft. Polk Louisiana. In my spare time I’d write. I’d draw, I’d observe life as if I was just here to watch and not be a part of it.
I was twelve, I came home from school one day and got off the bus to find my neighbor crying and she told me that my mom was in the hospital and I needed to see her while I could… that meant death. I got to the hospital and I saw my mother, completely comatose, and I sat alone in that room for hours next to her, alone as far as I was concerned, I was twelve and I understood my mom was most likely going to die and the looks that the nurses gave me and the doctors glances from over their charts only confirmed. My neighbor took me home to wait for my step dad who was on the first flight back from Iraq that night. For all the times in my life I thought I was alone, just drawing life as it pasted, I knew what alone really was.
Three months later my mother was brought out of her coma. Her spleen exploded and so did a soccer ball size growth on her spleen and ovary, for three months she was in ICU, and every day at 3:45 pm they’d take her to surgery and open her up and wipe the staff infection off her organs, but to the amazement of everyone she lived. Her life meant that my step dad would go back to war, I never liked my mother, probably never will, but I could never wish death upon any living thing. The pain medication she was on when she got out of the hospital made her violent, she’d beat me, she’d yell at me she’d call me everything but white. So in turn I acted like all the things she told me I was. I drank, I smoked, I popped pills I watched my life amount to nothing, and over time I tried to end my life. I woke up every day, uninspired, unimportant, unmotivated and sick of it all. I stopped doing the art I loved, I stopped talking and then eventually I didn’t do anything.
February 23, I tried to kill myself. I was twelve. The next day, and I’ll never forget this, my mother and I were sitting in the parking lot of the grocery store and she looked at me and said “We’re not a family, you don’t like me, and you’re moving in with your grandmother tomorrow” then she started the car and she packed some clothes in a garbage bag for me and threw it in the car and seventeen hours later I found myself in Clinton, Iowa.
You may wonder what all this has to do with my artistic life and creative decisions, well I’ll tell you. If it wasn’t for my antisocial childhood, my step dad I barely knew, my mother, and my near death experience, I wouldn’t understand what Marcel Duchamp meant when I first read his wise words. “Bad art is still art in the same way as a bad emotion is still an emotion.” My life went wrong, no twelve year old girl with no friends or family should have to see her mother like that, or know that all the love in the world could never make her feel ok without the love of a family, but you know what? I am alive. My life may have been bad but by any means, it was a life!
I do theatre because while I’m on this earth I have the gift of effecting people with my art. If someone looks at me and says “That looks awful” or “That’s a horrible idea” all I can do is say, at least it’s an idea! Everyday people look at my art and they have something to say about it, and in the end that’s all I want is for people to think when they see it. No matter what anyone says, I want to create. Theatre is a chance for me to work with others and create together. Our art is a way to share our ideas and life stories and the thought of sharing things like that with fellow artists is worth every negative comment, rude look and misunderstood concept anyone could give me.
I’m taking a risk putting out the art I show people. Every piece I complete and show is another part of me. I feel as if I’m doing something fresh and new and I know some people dislike the subject matter I deal with or the harsh quality to some of my designs, but the truth is, not everything in life is going to come up sunshine and Santa Claus. I’d never ignore criticism, because it’s almost like you’re ignoring what someone feels, if my art makes people want to say something them I hope they’d say it. I feel that that is something that artists aren’t doing much of recently, and that’s making people want to say something about what they do. What’s the point of making something public if you don’t openly except the public’s reactions. I want to stand by what I do; after all, it’s a piece of me. What people say about my art can only help growth, I will become better, I will go to school and I’ll learn all I can, and I’ll keep creating no matter what.
“Art may be bad, good or indifferent, but, whatever adjective is used, we must call it art, and bad art is still art in the same way as a bad emotion is still an emotion.” I’ve come too far to let people stand in my way of what makes me happy, I’m alive!
