Honour
I've been working on a sculpture for an art class and discovered that it is absolutely amazing how various parts of my life come together into one form. The week that I started working on this sculpture, I had the opportunity to assist at The Institute of Healing Arts and serve someone else through integrated processing. The session I facilitated was all about honoring self and standing up for truth, even when it can be painful or incredibly unpleasant. I was so impressed at how this woman had honored herself, and not given in to the pressures of those around her. I walked away from that realizing that it must take some incredible, inner love to withstand the rejection and betrayal that she had in order to honor herself. I love it when I get to meet and talk with amazing people.
The following day I began work on a wire sculpture for my class. I had never worked with wire, never sculpted anything, and I really wasn't sure how this was going to go. As part of the assignment I was required to make a couple sketches of my idea (I cannot sketch--trust me, my sketches look really unrecognizable), and the first idea that came to mind was a flower - to be specific - a lily. As I was sketching I was taken with the idea of growth -- that the roots come first, yet we never really see the roots of flowers. I decided I was going to sculpt a flower with roots and my goal was to define the roots the most (since they've had the most time to grow), and leave the flower petals undefined because they are still growing. As is pretty typical, my idea changed a lot when I discovered how difficult it is to work with wire. I got the roots fairly complete, looked at the mess of wire I'd made, and a wild combination of wires twisted randomly, and I
was ready to throw it out. There was no way I was going to succeed. Unfortunately, I didn't have time to restart. I'd spent so much time getting the roots right, I had to move forward with the original plan.
The time crunch inspired another idea related to growth. There are a lot of things that go into who we are. We're made up of our successes and our failures. We might try something new, but quickly discover it doesn't work and throw it out. Even still, that attempt, no matter how small or insignificant, becomes a part of who we are. And so often, those attempts, are the things we hide beneath the surface because we feel a little ridiculous. We think they didn't really change us, but lets just face fact: everything we do changes who we are. We will never be the same person we were yesterday.
With these thoughts about honor and growth running through my mind, I continued my flower with a new perspective. Here is a piece of my artist statement that talks about the process of creating this flower. I've greatly enjoyed the time I spent appreciating the little things that make up my roots.
"An important concept in this piece is the
inclusion of the roots connected to the flower. The idea was to highlight an
aspect of flowers that we don’t often consider because it truly is the roots
(ugly as they may be) that make the perfect flower form possible. Throughout
the construction of this project I kept every wire scrap that was cut during
the process and my final step was to find a place in the roots for every one of
those “useless” scraps, embracing the fact that who we are is due to the small,
little scraps of ourselves that we often discount or throw out. I wanted to
honour everything that went into creating the flower."
The following day I began work on a wire sculpture for my class. I had never worked with wire, never sculpted anything, and I really wasn't sure how this was going to go. As part of the assignment I was required to make a couple sketches of my idea (I cannot sketch--trust me, my sketches look really unrecognizable), and the first idea that came to mind was a flower - to be specific - a lily. As I was sketching I was taken with the idea of growth -- that the roots come first, yet we never really see the roots of flowers. I decided I was going to sculpt a flower with roots and my goal was to define the roots the most (since they've had the most time to grow), and leave the flower petals undefined because they are still growing. As is pretty typical, my idea changed a lot when I discovered how difficult it is to work with wire. I got the roots fairly complete, looked at the mess of wire I'd made, and a wild combination of wires twisted randomly, and I was ready to throw it out. There was no way I was going to succeed. Unfortunately, I didn't have time to restart. I'd spent so much time getting the roots right, I had to move forward with the original plan.
The time crunch inspired another idea related to growth. There are a lot of things that go into who we are. We're made up of our successes and our failures. We might try something new, but quickly discover it doesn't work and throw it out. Even still, that attempt, no matter how small or insignificant, becomes a part of who we are. And so often, those attempts, are the things we hide beneath the surface because we feel a little ridiculous. We think they didn't really change us, but lets just face fact: everything we do changes who we are. We will never be the same person we were yesterday.
With these thoughts about honor and growth running through my mind, I continued my flower with a new perspective. Here is a piece of my artist statement that talks about the process of creating this flower. I've greatly enjoyed the time I spent appreciating the little things that make up my roots.
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