Artist? Artist.

I had never thought of myself as an artist.

Much like my childhood belief that a ribcage was the same as an iron cage where the bars couldn’t move, so thereby ribs couldn’t move (I was wrong), I had a rigid concept that art was visual only. In middle school (grades 6-8 in my Wyoming school), we had nine-week elective courses. During the art elective, I missed the first few classes on how to draw the crinkled pop can. I could crinkle the pop can but failed miserably in attempting to transfer its likeness to paper. Grades for the nine-week courses were an S (Satisfactory) or a U (Unsatisfactory). The instructor informed me he would like to give me an F, but all he could do was give me a U. His words did not help change my belief that I was unable to draw a stick figure, but did help cement my belief that I was not an artist.

Different experiences occurred along my journey that could have changed my mind, but didn’t. Art was a painting, a drawing, a sculpture. They always say Music and Art, right? So, this literal-minded human kept them separate in her mind too. I didn’t make the connection when I enlisted the efforts of my mother and brother in renovating the master suite in the double-wide trailer we lived in. Renovation was not art. That was construction and space improvement. (Yes, feel free to shake your head or facepalm at me. It is appropriate.)

I didn’t make the connection when, upon becoming frustrated slathering drywall mud over the taped paneling, I suddenly made the entire wall an epic finger painting – a finger painting Mom treasured until her death twenty some years later. (Mom did not receive finger paintings from me when I was young.  I was the child who came home from playing in the mud with my best friend across the street, and my white silk shorts were still clean. To this day I don’t know how I managed that. Give me a project now and I have stuff all over me merely by looking at tools. Well, except deck stain…) My fingerpainting of a wall was a frustrated temper tantrum with drywall mud, not REAL art.

I didn’t make the connection, when in my first house, I designed the basement finishing project, complete with ponderances of how to angle a certain wall to maximize light spillage from the east window into the rest of the basement, as well as create an easy turning radius for movement of large items.  That was functionality, not art.

I didn’t make the connection when, upon moving into my current home, Mom and I embarked on removing wallpaper that was IN ALL ROOMS EXCEPT THE BASEMENT AND ONE BATHROOM, and the subsequent wall retexturing using varied mudding styles throughout the house.  That was necessity, not art.

I didn’t initially make the connection when I began what became my EPIC deck plantings every year. I take Petunias and Pansies very seriously.  Before COVID, my deck and surrounding area had amassed roughly 40 pots, baskets, or plantings. It was here as I began my late afternoon wanderings about my deck, phone camera in hand, catching angles of light around the flowers that I finally realized, years after the first epic deck planting, that I painted in flowers. I painted in swaths of color that changed day to day, light to light, season to season. I was an artist, and art breathed and changed.

Vincent van Gogh, The Blute-fin Mill, 1886. Oil on canvas. Museum de Fundatie, Heino and Zwolle, Netherlands.

Image obtained from Wikipedia https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3f/Vincent_van_Gogh_-_Le_Moulin_de_blute-fin%281886%29.jpg

Years ago, a Van Gogh exhibit came through the Denver Art Museum. It was there I experienced my first moment of being enthralled by a painting.

I stood transfixed in front of The Blute-Fin Mill, while people continued milling around me. I’d been captivated similarly to this before, bewitched in front of an elephant (no joke – but different blog post!), but NEVER a painting. I’d been ensnared like this before while inhaling an expansive earthly view that permeated my soul, but never a painting. The painting filled me with the same sense of awe and wonder as standing at the edge of an ocean, or on a mountain outcropping gazing across sunlit hills and valleys. There is an expansive sensation that fills me, liberating a sensation of aloftness in my ribcage -no longer made of iron bars- elevating and catapulting my spirit to soaring through the air. The sensation so overwhelming, the excessive beauty leaks from my eyes in tears of joy, wonderment, and sense of right.

Recently I encountered the profile of a photographer in Scotland via Tik Tok.  His countenance  calm, humorous, friendly, cheerful. I scrolled through his Tik Tok videos. I Googled his work. Bryan Millar Walker.

Initially I was unable to discern exactly what drew me to Mr. Walker’s work. (We do have proof above that there are a few things for which I may be a wee slow on the uptake.) I then found an article in which the work of other photographers was included alongside that of Mr. Walker’s. I began scrolling down the page, surprised that before I would read a photo ownership byline, I knew it wasn’t Mr. Walker’s. I didn’t yet know why I knew, I just knew. I kept scrolling. Upon seeing the top half of his photographic work, my breathing changed to something much deeper, more expansive. My pulse quickened, then found a joyous calm and depth of peace. I knew it was Mr. Walker’s photograph, and this was confirmed by the byline. I am deliberately only including the link to the article, so if you decide to scroll, you may experience the change in feel from the first two photographs to that of Mr. Walker.

https://www.amusingplanet.com/2020/09/the-balmoral-pyramid.html

As I unearthed more photographs in my Google exploration of this talented ARTIST, I soon found myself silently weeping. Mr. Walker manages to capture the expansive, limitless sensation of being present to the awe and wonderment that fills me in those moments of joyous rapture, soul-permeating, free-breathing LIFE experiences. Breathing. Breathing. BREATHING!!!! His work captures the inhalation…his photos BREATHE.

Breath. (lightbulb) BREATH!

As singers, everything we do is based on the breath. The more we ALLOW the air to fill us, and breathe in the intent of the phrase, the more liberated our singing. (There is more to it, but let’s keep this post to just somewhat long rather than get-a-bowl-of-popcorn long.) As a performer I have experienced the awe-inspired exhilaration when the performance breathes a life of its own – the weightlessness in my soul, the musical camaraderie with the other musicians as we ride a wave of art and magic and music that we spin in such a way that the life we entwine into the music begins growing beyond our initial energetic input and begins to spin us, the momentum culminating and expanding all of the collective hours of practice and training over the years, becoming something freer and bigger than we could have imagined. That magical “it” doesn’t happen in every performance, but its seductive allure is enough to entice one to keep chasing it. Chase the musical bliss. The exhalation.  The inhalation.

In July of 2020, a Facebook friend asked what I do for a living, but requested it be explained poorly.  My reply: I attempt to craft energetic auditory and invisible magical madness organized along the space time continuum, in varying frequencies, from sometimes breathing organisms who utilize, at most, less than 5% of their available chemical and electrical impulses at any given moment.

As musicians, aren’t we painters of the auditory space? Unless it is recorded, our art is simply briefly painting the air waves that keep us alive. Inhalation: the world filling us with abundant life. Exhalation: how we color it. “Crafting energetic auditory and invisible magical madness.” Our art simply adds colors to a single moment, stitching an energetic thread to the next moment, the emotion and experience through time (madness organized along the space time continuum). We are prolific. We consistently refine our craft so as to better color the air. As Van Gogh captured the movement of life in his painting, as Walker captures the inhalation, we as musicians paint the exhalation. (And as singers, we spend a great deal of time focusing on the inhalation!)

If we create, are we not artists? The businessperson who starts a company – is there not an art to the creation? The mechanic who repairs an auto – is there not an art to their repair? The landscaper who overturns the soil to prepare it for seed – is there not an art to that? (The soil turning effort also allows the soil to breathe…but again…different blog post).  The road construction crew – is there not an art to that? The seamstress caring for her sewing machine, cutting the fabric, and creating something that didn’t exist before, is that not art? In being supportive of a friend, is there not an art in that? Is there not room for art, beauty, and joy in all that we create? However you choose to paint your life, may you paint wisely, with joy, with breath. May you feel your art grow in positive waves all around you. May you SEE the art in all things. May you stitch the moments with joy, beauty, movement, inhalation, and exhalation. And maybe, just a little music.

I had never thought of myself as an artist. I am delighted to have learned I was wrong.