On Me as an Artist

I never really considered myself as an "artist" until pretty recently. Until then I was just someone who did art. yes, I have other creative hobbies such as writing, playing guitar. But they were never anything more than that, and I would've never considered them to be in the realm of art. I'm not sure why the switch happened. Everything basically started changing once I read Joan Didion and picked up a journal for my English class. My reinterest in reading peaked again during my senior year while I was taking AP Lit. My writing interest peaked during that summer when I started Seether. Visual art was always harder to come by. The past 4 years I had been making art out of necessity, in order to complete assignments and get a grade. The pieces I made were meaningless beyond the surface level purpose of being for class. But I guess all that really started to change once I introduced myself to Patti Smith.

I mean, she was everything. Artist, writer, musician, fashionable in the way I like, spiritual, everything I strove to be. That on top of the fact that the new art class I was taking helped give me a new perspective on the art I could be making. I began to see art through an intellectual realm, through an emotional one as well. Art was something you could put your whole self into, and others could put all of themselves into and the whole world could feel as one.

I wanted art to be me. I felt an insatiable urge to make things and share them with everyone. I started making videos, montages really. I carried around my little camera with me, anxious to capture everything.