How i fell back in love with art

I graduated from the University of Arizona School of Art in May of 2022 and can count on one hand the number of completed personal projects since my grad ceremony. Call it procrastination, laziness or a spiral of existentialism, but I can never seem to find the time for the pile up of half baked art projects in my house. 

While I enjoy all kinds of art, my true loves are video, sculpture and performance. I enjoy the challenge of  exploring the limitless possibilities for what I could express with my body when words could not. I loved woodworking and welding, feeling proud when I could point to the side table in my room that holds my perfume bottles and getting to say, “I made that!” Though, when I was in school, I had an immense amount of support from faculty and a talented artist community that pushed me towards creating. 

But there were deadlines and structures to follow in school. The pressure was on to make art, but in the real world, I am in charge of whether or not I finish a project. I found myself always making excuses as to why I wouldn’t create art once I hit postgrad, and it often boiled down to my hectic schedule and lack of inspiration. 

I wanted to be serious about creating again, so I started by writing in my calendar to set aside at least one hour per week. It didn't matter the medium, I just needed to dip my toes back into my art. This later turned into bringing my sketchbook to bars and propositioning friends for craft nights. I started expressing to my friends the artistic rut I found myself in, and was shocked by how many of them related heavily. Our conversations turned into what projects we were currently working on or had left behind. By purely speaking about them aloud, these forgotten works  were given life and spoken into existence once more, making them real and not something collecting dust. I would leave these chats feeling a little less alone and a lot more encouraged.

I was very fortunate to have such passionate art instructors at U of A, all of whom had a plethora of endless resources including books, movies, galleries and museums to visit. It was now up to me to source my own  inspiration, and after moving back to Phoenix, I was lucky to find that this city  has an endless supply.

I became a frequent visitor at the Phoenix Art Museum’s “Object of the Month” lecture series, and I started signing myself up for any one-off art classes that piqued my interest. For the longest time I had a fear of going alone to these sessions, when in reality over half of these classes/lectures would also be people in my exact shoes, knee deep in their search to reignite their creative spark. These one off art classes and lectures were also perfect for my schedule since they typically took place on weekends and weeknights. I’ve met so many beautiful and talented individuals at these events, one of my favorite experiences being a figure drawing workshop hosted by thems. a queer collective in Phoenix.

Art is my longest love in life, I don’t know where I would be if I never started creating. It makes me sad to think there was a period in time that I didn’t prioritize nurturing it. Now that I have found new ways to incorporate art back into my time, I regained my sense of self and feel overall more happy. If you truly love something, and have the passion for it, you will find the time.