Seeing Paradise, Starkly
This past year has been a series of stark, swift, deep perceptual shifts. Consciousness cracked-open, shattering into seemingly unconnected pieces: terror/ tenderness, grief/ relief, shock/ hope.
I’ve witnessed myself, as though from afar, leaning-in with great energy, culling meaning and insight while deeply terrified. My strange make-up as a human tends towards this behavior: to sharply, starkly see the beauty of this fragile experiment of life while battered by the terror of existence. My deep, personal anxiety takes the outward form of confidence, a demand for something better. This is a pattern. I remember clearly 9/11: After waking to the news, I spent the day in the park with friends, most of whom were appalled at my exclamation of it being an extraordinarily beautiful day— the light on the trees, the lawn, just perfect.
This past year, I swiftly transitioned my teaching into the virtual realm, guiding a group of aspiring painters into a focused, now domestically-oriented creative practice. I did it with external energy and grace; inwardly, I developed an ulcer.
I continued developing a major body of work, based on the gardens at Bloedel Reserve. My first solo museum show, at Bainbridge Island Museum of Art, was slotted to open in October 2020… was pushed back twice, eventually opening on my 42nd birthday: February 19, 2021.
I was thankful for the extended time. Changes that occurred in the work expressed the shift in reality; that shift was necessary for this body of work. I was deeply thankful for the slow pace the installation could follow, an unexpected and meaningful time with the space and the work while it was closed to the public.
Also in February, I was Artist in Residence at Oxbow, in Georgetown. A project called “Color Notes” which became a kind of laboratory to organize my teaching concepts in the physical realm, something I had lost in the shift to the virtual.
In March and April, I developed and installed a 30-foot mural as part of the Facebook Open Arts commission. I felt total joy and release in creating this piece.
This past year has been the most fruitful of my entire life.
Amid such suffering and struggle, I’ve been thriving. My voice is clearest amid chaos. Reality falling to pieces is my norm. Constructing a creative life is how I have dealt with my own, sometimes debilitating, inner demons my entire life. I’ve felt a kind of relief this year, that the rest of the world is seeing the heightened stakes too. A relief in the exposure of injustice and terror. That eyes are open. To see Paradise, starkly, through the cracks in normalized perception. To know that nothing is a given, that all the parts are movable. That we have to rebuild it anew each day.
This essay first appeared on Art During the Pandemic, @artduringthepandemic