I've been on a voyage of sorts

Back when I was in art school, this is one of the first pieces I made in my collage class.  My teacher did not like it.  In the long run, I didn't keep it.  I probably actually stripped the board and put something else over it.  Cranes maybe.  It doesn't matter.

The thing is, looking back at it, I still like it, and probably would have found a place for Steampunk Dreams in my home. 

The problem, according to the instructor, was that the piece contained words, and that those words made this "advertising" or "propaganda", and not art.    The print is from a book, Possibly a poem, but the selection does not completely reflect the actual original piece, but when I was cutting up the paper, to make the print into a pattern rather than words, this small piece spoke to what I was doing, and I inserted it as it was cut.   Found poetry, perhaps.

During my time in art school there were a lot of cases like that... and I quickly found out that what one professor saw as "art" another showed nothing but distain for. What one found "gallery ready" another said was too "crafty". I won a few awards for some of my favorite individual pieces, and had a few in juried gallery shows. 

In the long run, much what went to the galleries for sales ended up being things I thought were too production oriented: the cranes. I could pump out several cranes per hour, and I'd take them to the gallery a half dozen at a time.  I remember my first show with cranes, and how I went to the gallery, and was so sad that I didn't see my cranes hanging anywhere.  Of course, that feeling was mitigated when I found out that the reason my cranes were not hanging was because they had sold during the preshow for other gallery owners. 

The whole crane story relates back to my original reason for going to art school: to become better at craftmanship, and to learn specifically about color.  My instructors hated that I didn't see myself as an "artist", and that I eschewed art history classes.  For me, this was an important thing to realize: that I could and intended on enjoying something (and perhaps make a little money off it) without becoming an "expert".  Oh, I did get my art degree, but for me that was also a practical matter: one of getting scholarship money to pay for my classes and studio space, rather than becoming "expert".  Art is the one thing that's I've held "pure" in my intent to not become an expert... to not make it serious, to make it work, to make it so sharply into focus that there is no room for other things.

Which takes me back to my voyage.

Because I've started to learn that I do not have to be or do one thing.  When I was a docent at the aquarium, I lived and breathed marine science.  I thought about going back to school and getting another degree. Some of my co-workers assumed I already had a PhD in marine biology, and that my daughter had followed in my footsteps rather than I in hers.  I still have piles of books on marine mammals and intertidal life, books, that for the most part, I have not read completely, but have kept as reference, because I felt I needed to be an expert. I've come to realize that I can love all that without being an expert, and that I can teach 5th graders about marine life without a PhD. 

I am making room for other things. 

For years, I've done one thing at a time:  I've done fiber. I've done collage. I've done marine science.  And I threw myself into those things pretty much full time, making them fill up my days, demanding that they demand more of me. 

Then came the pandemic, and I was no longer a volunteer, no longer teaching fiber, or marine science. Here in CA where I hadn't the connection to a gallery, or space to do a lot of work, except to pump out a few cranes which no-one here seemed interested in (I've thought about changing the product to be garibaldi, which might have more local appeal)  and some pieces I'd wanted to make for my own home.   And I'm home.  Day in and day out.  And the thing is, when I go whale watching, I appreciate it more.  When  paint, I appreciate it more, and I like more of what I'm producing.  I'm reading more. 

Then I lost my daughter... and that changed me. 

It changed the way I view my chronic illness, and how I relate to my health.  It changed my need to fight for everything, and to accept the things I can't change.  And when I decided I didn't need to fight for everything, that also meant I didn't have to be an expert in everything.

I don't need to be an expert in California or Spanish colonial history.  I don't need to be an expert in art.  I don't need to be an expert in marine biology, I don't need to be an expert in anything I love, I can just love it on my own terms.

I feel like it's something I've rediscovered back when I used to go to SciFi conventions.  When Star Trek fans started calling themselves "Trekkers" instead of "Trekkies", because (damn it!) they were serious,  even as someone earning a graduate degree in Literature  (my Masters project involved information credibility on the web, and was utilized to make a database of credible sources of information for science fiction studies) I considered myself a "Trekkie".  I was not going to dissect Star Trek the same way I did other literature and media.  I was just going to enjoy it.

So perhaps this voyage has carried me forward, perhaps backward to a different age before I became too sharply focused, or perhaps I've simply finally, at 62, learned that if I have a purpose in life, one thing that I want to devote my life to, it's the exploration and enjoyment of many things, none to the exclusion of the others.  

My daughter used to tell me there is room on my wall for more degrees.  Maybe I will get a few more. Maybe not.  It depends on whether or not those degrees have to take up my entire life as I work through them, or if I'm working through them to explore new things without feeling like I need to know everything about whatever I'm learning about.