Day 1- Background

Art wasn’t always something I had a passion for, nor was it anything I thought I could actually do. I leaned heavy on biology and science starting in elementary school, and was dead-set on becoming a veterinarian. My second home was at the Virginia Living Museum in Newport News Virginia until I graduated high school. I didn’t realize you needed both creativity and critical thinking skills to be a well rounded sciency-type person until well into adulthood.

Long story short, I didn’t get into vet school which led me to pivot to microbiology. Grad school for pathogenic microbiology didn’t work out either (although I got to interview at the building where part of the Hot Zone takes place which was neat). For the first time in my life I had no clue what the fuck I was suppose to do with my life. Up until then, I was very much an anxiety-riddled overplanner. I mean, I still am, but I’ve developed several coping mechanisms to tone it down a bit.

I moved to Fairfax after college and got a contract job as a lowly lab tech in Maryland. I spent a lot of my free time at museums in DC, and that’s when I started to understand the connection between art and science. There was particular Dada exhibit at the National Gallery that changed my whole perspective on how I viewed art. It was ok and sometimes welcome to laugh at it. It was ok to have it not really mean anything at all or have it mean everything. The dioramas of dinosaurs at the Smithsonian weren’t created and built by scientists, but with the help of artists. Art was everywhere. It was also helping me cope with some emotional trauma that I hadn’t realized I was going through until I had time to process it later on in life.

I left Fairfax in ‘07 to move to Minneapolis. I was leaving an abusive marriage that lead right into another bad relationship, but I was still alive so I considered that a positive. I threw what I could fit into my tiny Subrau and drove from Virginia to Minnesota only having visited the state twice (and not in winter), had no job lined up, and didn’t know anyone. I struggled for a long time to get settled, ended up in yet another bad marriage, and finally found my footing in woodblock printmaking. If that sounds like I’m yadda-yaddaing through a whole bunch of stuff, I most certainly am. What I wanted to establish in this first blog post isn’t how I came to printmaking, but how I came to be open to creativity. My journey to printmaking can be another post.

My art-a-day challenge is to get better at the fundamentals. I depended too heavily on tracing when I started printmaking, and I feel a like I’m stuck at a skill plateau. Sketch to woodblock is the most anxiety-inducing part of my art process. I would love to be able to look at a reference photo and sketch without too much interference from my computer.

I purchased an online course on black and white ink drawing from Ioana Pioaru a couple months ago. It’s been a struggle to motivate myself to work through the lessons because, turns out, drawing is hard. This project is just what I need to push myself through all the frustration that comes with learning a new skill. I’m going to restart the course (see crappy leaf I drew today in gallery below), and work my way through each module. On days I can’t work on a whole lesson, I’m going back to my ol’ standby of old woodcuts that I find in museum digital archives. I’m sure some days all I can manage is some circles or lines, but as long as pen is to paper, it’s practice.

I won’t be updating this blog every single day. I’ll most likely be updating weekly or bi-weekly. The blog isn’t the important bit, it’s doing something every single day.