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>> I don't remember a time
when making art was not important to me.
I was an only child.
So, creating drawings is just a way to pass the time
but it was something I just thoroughly enjoyed.
Here's one of my earliest creations.
I think I was exploring the emotions
of a panicked cat trying to sneak by a lot of sleeping dogs.
[laughter] And I have my grandmother to thank
for very carefully noting the date
and my exact date six months seven year-- seven or six and,
you know, for posterity there.
I self-identified as an artist fairly young.
And by the time I finished high school,
I knew I was going into art.
I spent over seven years
in the visual arts building here on campus.
And after eventually finishing my MFA, I decided to carry
on with art education because I wanted to see it to high school.
And I vividly remember standing on the steps
of the visual arts building and telling one
of my fine arts professors that I was going into art education.
He had on his black leather motorcycle pants
and his black helmet and a cigarette, this professor here,
and a cigarette in his hand
and he just gives me this traumatic eye roll
and "Seven years, damn it, Sarah, seven years.
I don't care how much you love making your drawings,
you're going to quit in seven years if you go into teaching.
It happens to every artist that goes into teaching."
And while not the most supportive comment he could have
made to me, ironically, it ended up being
about the best comment he could have made because I spent--
I consciously made the time and I made the space
for my creative process.
I-- it made me set emotional plan
to always have the time everyday
and to create a space for drawing.
And even when my husband and I were first married and we lived
in this tiny apartment outside of Atlanta, I have this five
by five foot utility room.
I could fit my drawing board, my pencils, my radio,
and that's it, that's all I needed to go in
and out everyday in the studio.
And after transitioning out of graduate school
and into teaching, I just started,
initiated this process of-- with this large scale portrait,
narrative portrait drawings.
And I continued doing these drawings, fostering that process
of working while teaching for the next seven years.
And in April of 2001, my husband accepted a job in New York City,
so we moved to New Jersey which is
into a commuter town right outside of Manhattan.
And I was eight and a half months pregnant
and we have moving boxes all over the house.
And I set up baby's nursery.
And I set up my studio.
I was prepared and a few later, we gave--
I gave birth to my first son.
I was so not prepared for motherhood
and all these emotions.
Love and anxiety, am I doing this right to all of it.
And an interesting thing happened, my drawings seized
to become precious, these precious objects.
And this precious baby boy who I loved and nutured and cared for
and the drawings became a process and not a final product.
About four months after our son was born, all those anxieties
and emotions tied into child birth became links connected
with all the emotions of living outside of Manhattan
in the wake of September 11th.
Commuter town, my husband is going into work everyday
and for months, there was this really heavy sense
of insecurity and fear.
So, those became compounded and linked.
And it was at that point that I stopped drawing these portraits
and I moved into self-portraiture.
I realized that I was drawing these models
and I wasn't connecting to how I was feeling.
So, by drawing the self-portrait,
I was able to delve into these fears and anxieties
and all these emotions I was feeling.
And although I don't-- but, you know,
once I moved past all those anxieties and fears,
I still continue to do self-portraits today
because somehow I'm able to connect a little better
with what I'm working on.
In 2003, I gave birth to twins, a boy and a girl.
And despite-- unfortunately, I had that studio process
of making the time and making the space in place.
So I was able to sustain working.
I wasn't going to let motherhood keep me out of the studio.
And I remember a friend coming over and saying,
"How do you keep doing this?
You have all these babies and you're still making drawings."
And I sort of cheekily but very sincerely responded, "I--
my pencils and paper are way cheaper than therapy."
And I-- what-- I explained that I have to externalize
like all these like this pressure, I externalize it
and put it out into these drawings and sort of let it go.
And all this anxiety is related to, like I said, motherhood
and even into fear about the environment and the world,
and even delving back into my own personal history.
This drawing titled "Cotton Mountain Magnolia" is
about the relationship between me and my grandmother.
This is the same grandmother who carefully noted on all
of my drawings my exact age.
And this is the same grandmother that would drive me
around her small South Carolina town, to the bank
or the Piggly Wiggly until the bank teller check out,
the girl at the Piggly Waggy-- Piggly Wiggly.
My grades and the honors, awards, all these things proudly
as if this were some major accomplishment.
But this was also the same woman
who once told me those colored people should get their own
Bible, their own religion and that is ours.
And even as a small child, I had trouble reconciling this kind
of racist talk and ideology with this woman who I loved
and cared for so deeply.
She died in 2008 and I started this drawing shortly
after her death to work through some of these.
And the magnolia is the drawing below
down in the shape of a heart.
And her face is calm.
This is a death portrait.
And my hands are tied by that serpent unable
to change what cannot be changed, you know,
perceiving through that field of thorny cotton.
And the interesting thing about working this personal process
of putting pencil onto paper is--
so much goes to my mind while I'm working--
images, words, stories.
And while working on this one, I kept having these,
the words love and hate, love and hate, love and hate,
and I have this image of Robert Mitchum's hands
in the movie Night of the Hunter.
Love and hate tattooed across which led into this image
of the same movie, Shelley Winters' hair billowing around.
And that's the sort of imagery that comes
to me while I'm working on a piece like this.
The interesting thing about that personal process
in creating is the act allows you to just process and look
at personal details, the deeply felt conflicts and emotions
and sort through these.
And it's really a rewarding process.
This is a series of self-portraits and wore paint
across the surface of the drawing.
And while working on this piece, my immediate family
and I were dealing with some extreme
and unpredictable behavior from a relative who's mentally ill.
And each of these portraits documents my interactions
with that relative.
There was acquiescence and sort of introversion
and then confrontation is [inaudible].
And there's a gradual emotional shift there
from obedience toward sort of defiance and anger
as protective mother and wife.
And these drawings are stitched into a larger drawing
with a cottage, this idealized, romantic, unattainable,
[inaudible] sense of home.
And throughout that are these animals beaded,
nightmarish animals that flow and flutter in, in and out,
animating that sense of anxiety.
And needless to say working on a piece
like this is a really healing process as an artist.
So much frustration goes into every bead, every stitch,
every mark, and it's an obsessive and kind
of ritualistic and self-absorbed process that allows me to sort
through a lot of emotions.
We have a studio tour in my town
in New Jersey every year and this woman comes.
She's come every year to my studio.
And several years ago, she just pulls me aside, just like,
"Sarah, you know I love your drawings.
I come here every year but I have
to tell you I could never leave with or own one of these things.
They're just-- it's too intense.
I had a various, you know, emotionally traumatic childhood
and they take me there, but I have to come every year."
She's really apologetic.
And while not the most lucrative patron [laughter],
what was interesting was that it was one
of the most affirming conversations I'd ever had
with a viewer because it made me realize that by delving
into these emotional terrain, I was able to create this thing,
this object that she found also emotionally affecting.
But I don't think about the viewer while I'm in the studio.
For me, it's about personal process of making this thing,
you know, it's for too, in a sense, a viewer can come along
for the ride, but for the most part, it's that process
and I have to trust and hope that this thing,
this object I make, is something
that the viewer will find affecting.
And that the viewer will connect to because when we connect
to a work of art, that art can heal.
Art opens up to emotions that we would not choose to confront.
It can challenge, it can reinforce, it can identify
and label and, you know, reassemble emotions in a way
that can help us better live with our internal selves.
And with that said, or it doesn't have to be challenging
or confronted, no of course not.
It can just be something beautiful that sits on the wall
and speaks to us with calmness and serenity.
I believe, I firmly believe that anyone with the innate desire
to create artwork can do so.
Anyone, you don't need a degree.
Yeah, and you just--
your artwork doesn't need to be validated by an editor
or curator or gallery or critique.
What you make doesn't even have to be good or salable,
it's that process of creating that is
so enjoyable and transformative.
And, you know, there are so many--
there are millions of people
in the world today whose names will never go
down in the art history cannon, whose lives are just enriched
by that process of making things.
So if you thought, "I don't want to do this.
I want to draw, I want to paint, I want to, you know,
I want to make music," there's no reason not to do it.
Anyone can do it.
And it's that process that can be so rewarding for you.
It's making the time and making the space
for that process to happen.
And I can tell you that daily routine
and that process has been rewarding for me.
It's been therapeutic.
And that's a great thing because my pencils
and paper are a lot cheaper than therapy.
Thanks.
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