I knew from the beginning that I was going to be an artist. Not to say that it was my fantasy career from the get-go. In reality my dream job was to be a fabulous waitress, and I spent my early days before I could read or write, scrambling around my house scribbling nonsense on stacks of restaurant pads, taking imaginary orders ("what can I get 'cha?") while donning an apron and a loud shade of red lipstick. Sadly, to this day, I have never waited a table, but I must admit it is still a secret dream of mine....
Anyway, I suppose art didn't start out as my dream job because, well, I never knew it was one. A job, that is. Art was fun, relaxation, exploration, an excuse to follow my big sister around and beg her to give me lessons. Growing up on my family's farm in Connecticut, my first sculptural pieces were vegetable babies that I made with my other sister (eggplants and butternut squash were always the best for the body, green bean smile, corn silk hair..) I soon moved onto whittling boats from bars of soap (yes, my parents gave me my first jack-knife when I was six.) I am blessed to have grown up in a place where my imagination could run free and I could spend nearly all of my time outside, exploring, creating, and pretending. So much of my present inspiration comes from this and when I go back, I really am a child again, reexamining every inch of it, my playground.
Drawing was my thing in the beginning. I drew all the time. I drew portraits, animals, dancers, sports scenes, whatever I could think of. But one day I came up with (what I thought was) a particularly amazing composition of a smug sunshine wearing shades, casting a rainbow to a cloud, also sporting John Lennon-esque specs and a Joe Cool smile. Man, what a masterpiece! I would draw it all day, every day, particularly in large scale on a giant chalk board in my playroom. In third grade I entered my drawing in a greeting card contest at school, and to my surprise and great satisfaction, I was chosen along with a few other individuals to have my design printed and sold in local shops. I was published! This award assured me that this design was in fact, as brilliant as I had thought. Even if my mom snatched up every card in the tri-town area, I had never felt so accomplished.
So this was my first taste of artistic success, and boy, it was sweeter than a scoop of black raspberry ice cream coated in chocolate jimmies. I was hooked.
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A few weeks ago, I attended the Night of Spectacles in Atlanta, GA to receive an award for second place in an optical and sunglass design competition. There was a sustainability fashion show, silent and live auctions, great food, free bar, and lots of artwork. I brought my two lovely friends Nicole and Ashley (Talls and Beasty Cat, respectively) and got to hang with some other award-winning and absolutely fabulous artists and my pal, mentor, and professor, The Great PJ Chen. The night was a huge success, tons of fun, and I got a giant cardboard check out of the deal, so I was one happy four-eyed camper, which you can tell from the lock-jawed cheesy grin I'm beaming in the Polaroid over yonder.
So after close to seven years of on-again-off-again college life, I am about to graduate and be released into the wild. In professional preparation for the real world, I must create a blog, so here goes....
