https://padlet.com/amaniturner/8iabbruwuqjkask0 en-us 2023-04-22 19:06:11 UTC 2023-04-22 21:15:58 UTC hello@padlet.com amaniturner https://padlet.com/amaniturner/8iabbruwuqjkask0/wish/2564351855 Art has always been a part of my life. It is hard for me to separate myself from art because it has become an intrinsic part of my identity and my lifestyle. Even outside of creative ventures, I am always thinking about art and what it means to me. I am an artist in the same way that I am human. 

My relationship with art has changed many times. For much of my life, art was the only thing that I was good at and liked about myself. I was good in school, but it didn't feel rewarding to get congratulated on my grades. I was proud when people said that they liked my drawings, or thought I was a good violinist, or applauded me at theater or dance recitals. My relationship with myself was deeply rooted in the art that I made. I didn't allow myself to make bad art, and I didn't allow myself to step out of my role as an artist. I wanted to work in art for most of my life.

Then I realized that art didn't make me happy. I heard so much from others about what art should be and what I should be doing as an artist. I'm not assertive enough to advocate for myself in corporate art, but wasn't motivated enough to work alone. I also found that I didn't want to make the art that it seemed everyone else was making. For everyone else, it seemed that art should be used to make a statement or be criticized for not making valid arguments. I liked to make art that was beautiful and meaningless. I struggled to get through AP portfolios, where I was required to come up with a uniting theme. I didn't want to make a statement or reject artistic standards, I wanted to paint pretty girls and write books about monster hunters. 

On top of all of that, I was burned out. I was engaged in every form of art from a young age (music, writing, dance, theater, film, and visual art), and that had finally taken its toll. The idea of waking up and painting or writing every day sounded exhausting. I rejected art hard. I decided that I would go to school for economics and never do art again. Then I did something new: tech theater. Before, I had always been on stage. Being a stagehand was actually fun for me. But within a few years, I felt myself burning out again. I finally stepped back and examined why I had enjoyed art in the first place. 

I enjoy doing art because I like putting the images in my head into the real world. I didn't need other people to engage with my art, I only needed to make it for myself. The validation was nice, but it wasn't important anymore. I wanted to find something that I could wake up every day and be excited to do, and it seemed that art just didn't fit the bill. 

I'm not quitting art. I'm making it in a way that fulfills me. I don't force myself to draw, or try to market my creations, or compare myself to others anymore. I enjoy art in its purest form: its creation. Because of this realization, the process of creation has become something very interesting to me. I make art because it makes me happy, and if it makes others happy too, all the better. ]]> 2023-04-22 20:14:45 UTC https://padlet.com/amaniturner/8iabbruwuqjkask0/wish/2564351855 amaniturner https://padlet.com/amaniturner/8iabbruwuqjkask0/wish/2564365016 Starting next semester, I'm going to be starting my career in professional academia. I want to be a researcher in linguistics, or the study of language. That has had me thinking a lot about the transferrable skills that I acquired during my year in the theater department. I've known since last year that I wanted to pursue linguistics, but the exact role that theater would have in my future has changed. Initially, I wanted to do linguistics as a secondary project. Then I wanted to pursue them both in equal amounts. Finally, I decided that going into the arts wasn't something that I could see myself doing, and chose to drop theater entirely. But theater has still been foundational in the ways that I think about the world and about language. I saw Tales of Hoffman the other day, which is an opera in French. The singers all learned how to sing in French for their roles. I wondered about their individual relationships with language and with art, and I started thinking about my own. 

Academics is a big part of my process because, aside from art, it is the one other thing that has felt foundational to my creative process. I have a classmate majoring in rhetoric, and he makes me consider the ways in which rhetorical thought is a big part of creative communication. A lot of art, especially theater, is made with persuasion in mind. I find myself viewing shows through a rhetorical lens. When we create art with a message, we have to consider how we will share that message with others. Will we use emotion or logic? How will the audience engage in a piece? The same considerations go into academic rhetoric. I have to consider the audience when I write a play and when I write an academic paper. They go hand in hand, to an extent.]]> 2023-04-22 21:09:31 UTC https://padlet.com/amaniturner/8iabbruwuqjkask0/wish/2564365016 amaniturner https://padlet.com/amaniturner/8iabbruwuqjkask0/wish/2564365830 As I said before, I've been putting a lot of thought into the creative process recently. The way that I develop art varies wildly from piece to piece. No two artists use exactly the same process. In some cases, that leads to tension in collaboration. In others, it can lead to the discovery of new ideas. I try to appreciate each artistic process and each collaboration that I engage in. It can be frustrating when group mates fail to work with you, or when your ideas get voted out. However, there is value in failure as well. 

Last year, for my final art project, we were told to make any sort of piece that we wanted, just to measure our baseline improvement and have fun. I had been making a series of 10 paintings about reconciling with emotional distress. Almost all of the paintings were portraits, my favorite thing to draw. I made use of pattern (woodgrain, paisley, spirals, waves) in the works as well. I fell in love with paisley: it could be very simple, but I liked to spend hours drawing tiny swirls and dots. For my final, I wanted to do a work with paisley and a portrait. I thought it would be straightforward: two things that come intuitively and that I enjoy making. It took me three tries to paint my figure, and I almost scrapped what ended up being the final. I work in multimedia, and that project taught me a lot about what could be layered or what paper was appropriated for what project. In the end, I was happy with my piece, but it took me at least 4 months to make. That process showed me something about how creating art doesn't always just go smoothly. Some of my favorite pieces were made in a 20 minute burst of inspiration, and others took me over a year to complete. The success of art isn't dependent on its process. ]]> 2023-04-22 21:12:56 UTC https://padlet.com/amaniturner/8iabbruwuqjkask0/wish/2564365830