Mandy Moore - Only Hope (A Walk To Remember soundtrack)
This semester I'm in a Global Studies class. We've studied artists, tribes, cultures, museums, and misconceptions (prejudice ideas, racist notions, and misinterpretations of cultural context). It's been an extremely interesting class. I've gotten to read about and study such amazing artists as Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera and less well known artists that amaze me like Kara Walker and Gee's Bend Quiltmakers. The class asks you to think outside the box, look outside yourself, look inside yourself, and open your eyes, open your heart, open your mind. The whole experience has been nothing short of cathartic, and self revealing as well as an almost outer world experience outside of myself. For this particular assignment we were asked to create a "map", not a map in the sense of road map, but a map of a metaphoric nature. Here is my creation. I am sharing it because it deals with some very real issues of mine, and issues I know that many others relate to: autism, deployment, motherhood, womanhood, education, self-worth, sadness, and more. I hope you enjoy this very "naked" (no pun intended, it is a self portrait of me in the shower, but you can't really tell) view into my world...
Below is my Art, followed by my essay explaining my process.
"I am me, I am alive, I am Joy, I am home"
My Journey and Mapping Experience
I am American, half filipino, half welsh. A mother of two, military wife, art student, residing in my home state of California after living in 3 other states courtesy of the military. When prompted to create a map, I thought about my experiences, my environment, my "map", and felt torn about how to proceed. One morning, not long ago, I was in the shower, and like most of my "should be private" moments, I was sharing my space with my two toddlers. For warmth on this cold morning, my son, with his back to my back, wrapped his arms around my legs, and my daughter, with her back to my knees, wrapped her arms the other way. I glanced over to the mirror, and the image surprised me, it was beautiful. Our bodies, like puzzle pieces that only kind of fit, twisted together in the most natural way, for warmth, for love, for companionship. My body, holding the womb where I first grew this love, carrying my breasts with which I nurtured these babies, still warmed, still comforted, was still needed by two blessed angels.
Motherhood is a smothered existence, a thankless, tiring, wearing down of the spirit sort of life. However, moments, like the one I mentioned above, sprinkle the days like the tiniest vanilla bean in a batch of sugar, changing the flavor of every grain for the better. I felt on this morning that this was the map I wanted to create, this was my landing.
I began this process by sketching my memory of our silhouettes. I then took pictures of my body and my children's bodies to try and capture the image, the way our bodies curved, twisted together, and how we looked in our most natural state. I sketched my "map" before painting it, where I had included the shower glass enclosure, and came up with the idea of the shower fixture as a crying eye, my crying eye. I then transferred my sketch to a posterboard freehand, and like art does, it took on a life of its own.
The image is of me in the shower, with my two children backs against me, with their arms wrapped around me. My boy and my girl, almost the same sizes, they are 16 months apart, but could be mistaken for twins, and are always found hip to hip, at my hip. The shower fixture protrudes as my eye, crying out tears that are soaked up by me, and when absorbed by my children, have become a slight sprinkling, as if from a watering can onto seedlings. From somewhere we don't see, a yellow ribbon(symbolic of the yellow ribbon we wear for our deployed troops- the one I wear for my husband) wraps around us, it almost chokes me, but becomes flowers, my beauty, enhancing my womanhood, protecting my heart. As the ribbon continues, it wraps around my children and becomes support, for creativity (the purple) and for autism (symbolized by the puzzle pieces around my son). Towards the drain, the yellow ribbon has become a paintbrush that paints a pink bubble around us. This symbolizes the great support and love that I feel from my husband, even from afar, and how his support and love protects me, helps me to translate my emotions in an artistic way.
I added a poem onto my image:
My body is my land
the only place I own
the most stable home I know alone
I am an island lost in
this ocean, my tears
sting, they renew
they remind me
with a cold reality
that I must keep
being.
they attack crevices and canyons
waging a violent war, a storm
from my heart against my mind
a land turned against itself
A time existed, I thrived, I flourished
I created these two
born from my heart, they stay near
like islands attached by tangled seaweed
keeping alive my flora my fauna
the only beauty I sometimes know
Like sunlight they saturate me
a daily revival
alwaystherepullingpushinglovingwrappingkissingcryingmommyhuggingkeepingmealive
&silently vaguely he reaches from somewhere afar
wrapping thoughts around us
capturing us in his grasp
so we won't sink
so we won't float away
and while I wonder
who i am how I will survive
i catch a glimpse in the mirror
of the sky and realize
i am me i am alive i am joy
i am home
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