perception of art

I was in a room full of computer cables. The walls of calculated metal plates were coming in and out, matching my own breathing. It reminded me of the semiconductor layer diagrams my mother spends all day looking at. No doors–I was in a perfectly square computer chip. A table was in front of me, and in a white bowl that matched the room were about a dozen banana slugs.

Pacific banana slugs, the second largest slugs in the world, slimy and sunshine yellow. I’ve stepped on one or two by accident while hiking with my family. They were, in my childish opinion, the poison of the redwoods. Never failed to make me a little nauseous. I had to eat them.

What can I say? It was a messy process. I could feel them pulsing down my throat, and I was choking and coughing on their ooze that was dribbling down my chin. Every time I would retch, three or four more than I ate would land back into the bowl with a squelch, and all of them would squirm around in a frenzy. I choked them down again. They came back longer, bigger, more of them, so much so that the bowl started to overflow. Slugs were everywhere–on the walls, in between the walls, on my clothes, in my clothes. Gagging and gasping for breath, I woke up.

Calling my relationship with art complicated would not do it justice. It began in an expected fashion–every child draws. The first couple of times to plead compliments out of my parents, but I continued solely and sorely due to resentment and revolt. I wasn’t that interested until my parents–my mother, specifically–told me to stop. Her tricks worked on my brother, now going into computer engineering like everyone else in the house. I wasn’t going to make it so easy for her.

It was a rare moment of a rebellious teenager spirit. When it came to anything else, I was painfully shy. The only times I let loose was fighting my mom about what I wanted to do, which wasn’t exactly homework, but rather doodling away in a made up world with my made up characters–hardly the worst form of escapism.

So I drew because it was more fun to do something I wasn’t supposed to do. I drew to fight with my mom; I drew despite all the crayons she broke and all the drawings she ripped up. I drew to be a nuisance, really. I drew to draw sighs out from my dad, to trace my mother’s frown lines, to compose her lost composure. Silicon Valley was going to have to raise their mountains if it wanted to stop me.

My art did not grow from any integrity or fervor. Drawing was not my passion. It always was just the easiest thing to do secretly at home or in 7th grade math class, and the easiest thing to fish out the recycling bin when my teacher caught me distracted too many times and forced me to throw it out. The second time I was caught, she made me rip it up in front of the whole class.

It was what I wanted. Tearing it apart made me pick up another pen to do it all over again next period.

Ever since I started high school, I have had this recurring dream where my left hand gets cut off. I don’t know how. I can’t see anything; I forget the world isn’t always hazy and dark and shapeless. A painful stake of anxiety is slowly pressed between my ribs and god, I feel–I feel so afraid like I’m about to die. A distant part of me is keenly aware I’m sleeping, but it's so far away from the rest of me I can only hear the blood rushing through my ears. The anxiety twists and twists. I look down and my left hand is completely gone. A stump. Faded away like everything else. Gone.

I take a long shower after one of those. The only kinds of dreams I hate are the blind anxious ones. So I take a long, cold shower, sitting down, hands clasped. Just to double check it's there.

I’ve come a long way. By drawing so much, I slowly acclimated myself into actually enjoying it after all. Mostly because I became decently talented at it by doing so much. And my mom suddenly became so supportive after realizing I could apply to good colleges if I went for an art major. Oh yeah, now making art isn’t a problem at all, huh. I’m over fighting about it, but it just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I just don’t like flimsy opinions.

But the spirit of artistry was birthed somewhere along the way. What did I want to say without spelling it out? I had no idea. It felt like everything that needed to be said, that could ever be said, had already been on the (cob)webs in the corners of my phone.

I spent years of my life doing realism–and for my parents’ crowd of people, it was the most impressive. It did give me strong foundations and realism is still the most technically impressive, but my voice was lost somewhere in the shading. I tried to cater to friends, social media, and more crucially, the expectations I had set for myself. I was good at drawing. So wasn’t this five minute sketch looking perfect yet? Why is this object I’ve never attempted to depict looking so wonky? Art block–or fear, if you understand it. My inspirations felt unreachable. I could never match their skill, their vision, their creativity, or come up with a better message. I was the “art kid”. Who am I if I can’t do it? Had I spent my whole life fighting for a nonexistent talent?

In almost any sort of human pursuit, the goal post will always keep moving. The green light, whatever you want to call it. Whether it be fitness, a career, or art, if there’s true passion to the craft, there’s no fulfillment no matter how hard you try. I’ll speak on what I know. The better I get, the more I yearn for what I cannot create.

Once, I was walking up the stairs of Brookings, back from a grueling six hour shift in the Sam Fox studios. I had just rained and I was finally done with my drawing final. The fountains were mirrors up to an extremely clear night where you could see at most five stars. December had just started to mistreat the city–my breath was coming in short chalky puffs as I marched up that I always felt were too wide. It made the stairs look a bit self-centered.

I looked up and my eye caught the loops of the lamppost up at the very top of my trek. There were hooks and spirals around a scalloped stem, ornate curves and arcs of matte metal thickly painted in black. It was Gothic, but as if it was too lazy to commit to all its intricacies. I had never looked at it. I then glanced up at the bright light–the thing that, functionally, I was supposed to only see. And I stopped walking. I’m unsure why. It was curiously beautiful that I had noticed the unnoticeable first.

Art only asks two questions. First: What is it? And secondly: What is it? Art is as much as you’re willing to put meaning into it. What is it? A lamppost. Nothing special, put there so I could see where I’m going. Neither rare nor notable. I looked at the post before the lamp. Now, what is it? As I saw it that December night, most likely in a moment of sleep-deprived delirium, it made me think about what I don’t notice. It made me think about the plethora of trifles we constantly live around and never care to acknowledge. It made me believe that life exists in the cracks of the blizzard of details we pass by. When’s the last time you stood around, looking at all the effort put into the architecture you’ve walked by a thousand times before, or the loose flyer that’s floated by at least twice? I remember that moment, and that lamppost. If I can think a lamppost is beautiful, there would be more mundanity for me to live through. It’s reassuring.

Art asks you: just how much do you care? What is it to you? Picasso’s paintings are stretched fabric and just paint, arranged in some kind of way. It’s just a canvas. Yet if you understand the significance, if you find enough meaning in it, would you pay a couple million for some charcoal and watercolors? Up to you. That video game, or that sticker, or that lamppost, or that Valentine’s Day card you’ve kept since the second grade. Just how much do you care?

I’m transferring out of art school. It was fun while it lasted. I’m already taking an onslaught of chemistry and biology this semester, but by the time summer hits, it will be official. It feels disingenuous to pursue something I used to use as a weapon. And I think I’d hardly enjoy it if it became a career. The whole point of it is to create for no one else but me; injecting other incentives into the paper rots it from the inside out.

So I’m pivoting towards whatever I can tolerate. I’m less upset about it than I expected, mostly because I know I’ll never stop making art however my life goes. Maybe I’ll work a nine to five and dream about my alternative career taking off to quit my day job like everyone else.

Some normalcy would be good, I think.

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