Applying to graduate programs feels like driving up mountain road with switchbacks in northern Idaho…
… all before my morning cup of coffee. Feels a bit like I might throw up: all the time.
But then I hit a new switchback, and higher up the mountain, the snow stops for a moment. The dark air seems to pause, and I am, albeit for a brief moment, on track.
Then the next switchback, and I am blind again.
How to convey my desire to study art again?
At the top of the mountain, will their be an inversion or a view of Lake Ponderay?
After graduating in 2010, any art practice became something I avoided, trying on different professions like wool sweaters: would something else fit? Moving around the western United States: working in places and spaces sometimes memorable, but more often in very hidden roles traditionally filled by women: hotel staff, caregiving, and working with children.
Here I am, 14 years later, and the only thing that fits is making art through painting, woodworking (and printmaking and writing).
Now my practice is moving again and finally becoming what I’ve ached for - a safe space- a place where I can let that childlike version of myself, who wants to explore moving paint with a palette knife on a birch panel, do just that: play.
More than that, my practice is becoming a place where, as a woman artist, I can ask and begin to discover answers to the darker questions of the last 14-ish years.
What's happened to my body? How has sexual abuse and intimate partner violence shredded the naivety belonging to the young woman who once inhabited this body? And how the woman I am today is stronger, not despite those experiences but because I have lived through them?
I am a woman learning about safety: relearning trust. I can set boundaries and process experiences in new, healthy ways.
Hesitation in sharing my story exists. I don’t want to enter a world of comparative trauma bonding, “oh that’s so terrible… but listen to my story…”
What happens now: what happens in the after. How can my story create art that conveys a narrative about safety, education, and boundaries? Consent? I ache to contribute to a larger collection of stories about gender and relationships: to help connect, to lessen isolation in an increasingly isolated world.
The chance to be a student again? Amazing. Questions and collaborative work? How to distill the dream of the last three years into not 300 words, but 300 characters: what a silly goose thing to ask. And yet, here I am: applying.
