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- {NS} Where I grew up in the south, {BR} there was a right way to do things, and a wrong way to do things, {BR} and the right way was to do what your family and society thought you should do. {BR} And the wrong way was to do something different. {LG} {LS} {BR} By age thirty I had done most everything I was supposed to do. I'd overachieved in high school, {BR} I attended a prestigious college in the south, {BR} I had a good job, and I'd married well within the child bearing age. {BR} We'd married at my insistence of course, but neither one of us was fully on board. {BR} {LG} {LS} So except for moving up north to Boston, which caused my family to collectively take to their beds, {BR} I was on track with what we thought my life should look like, but I wasn't happy and I thought it was my career. {BR} In my family, I was expected to go into business. {BR} I had been in public relations for seven years, but I didn't like the work anymore. I mean I was good at it, {BR} but I was tired of working with clients and plus I was working with companies like retail banking, {BR} traffic reporting, {BR} hazardous waste recycling, {BR} nothing that really blew my skirt up {LG}. So I quit my full time job, and I started consulting, and I started taking classes to figure out what else I could do for a living. {BR} Now the only criterion for the classes was that the instructors and students {BR} could not know or care what the financial times was. {BR} I took needlepoint, directing, french. {BR} I found this brochure for the school of the museum of fine arts in boston, and I thought oh well this looks interesting. {BR} And I went to the school and I talked to the continuing education director and I asked him which class he thought I should take. {BR} And he said, you need to take art as process. {BR} We take burned out executives in that class all the time. {LG}
- I sign up. {BR} It's my first day of art school, {BR} I do my best to look artsy. {LG} To fit in. {BR} But even though I am not wearing pearls, they are still emblazoned on my chest. {LG} And our instructor Rhoda introduces herself {BR} and she says there is no right way to make art, {BR} and there is no wrong way to make art. {BR} Now this makes me extremely nervous {LG} because I have been raised that there is a right way and a wrong way to do most everything. {LG} {BR} And then she says the class will focus on process, {BR} the process of art making, not the end result. {BR} Now this makes me even more nervous, because I have been raised to focus on results and not just any results, but the best results. {BR} And there are no grades. {BR} Things careen out of control. {LG} If there are no grades, how will I know if I'm overachieving? {LG} I need to know that I'm overachieving. {LG} {LS} We start with the basics, {BR} and in my entire life I had never held a stick of charcoal in my hand, and it feels good. {BR} And I survived the first week of simple art exercises and I'm enjoying myself. {BR} And the next week Bob, one of the three instructors says, today we're gonna do gesture drawings. Very fast drawings, about forty five second poses. {BR} And we're going to draw the energy and the movement and the essence of the figure, {BR} and I am thinking, what the heck is essence, {BR} and how the heck do you draw it? {BR} And a man, the artists model, starts to undress. {BR} And I say, well that's okay. You've seed a naked man before. You've even had sex with a naked man before. {LG} Your problem is, you don't know how to draw this naked man's essence. {LG} And everybody else apparently does know how to draw his essence. {BR} As they're all busily getting out their easels and knowingly getting out sheets of paper and charcoal and other drawing mediums with which they excel. {BR} And I'm just standing there like the proverbial deer in headlights. {BR} And I begin to watch and imitate because I am clueless but competitive. {BR} {LG} And so I ask Judy, who is standing next to me, and also a mature student, {BR} I say Judy, what are these supposed to look like, {BR} because of course I think there's only one right way to do this, {BR} and we're all gonna draw the same image. {BR} And she looks at me bewildered and says, they're all going to look different. I'm paralyzed. {LG} What is mine supposed to look like? {BR} Can't I just do a slide presentation for your board of directors? {BR} Maybe conduct a communications audit? {BR} Assess your customer service capabilities? These are things I know how to do, {BR} things in which I excel. {BR} And I like to excel, {BR} and there is no way I'm gonna excel drawing this naked man's essence. {LG} And I'm about to cry, {BR} and then the competitive side of me kicks in and says well just snap out of it you big wimp and do something. {BR} So I start making these hopeless stick figures every forty five seconds, because that's how fast the poses are, every forty five seconds. {BR} And every forty five seconds I feel like a total failure, {BR} which is a lot of times in one hour {LG}. It's eighty. {LG} And the shame is enormous and I'm mortified at how inept I am and I'm like beating myself up for ever trying anything different, {BR} for even attempting anything new, {BR} and I'm in literal physical pain {BR} I am so far out of my comfort level, {BR} I mean I actually hurt. {BR} And I'm about to cry again, {BR} and that's when Bob comes over and shows me what amazing teachers can do, I don't even know what he says, all I know is {BR} he talks me off the ledge {BR} and breaks the vice grip that has a hold of me {BR} and I start to draw. {BR} At the end of class Bob picks one of my gesture drawings {BR} to put up on the wall with a bunch of other student drawings so we can discuss them. {BR} No one laughs at me or my drawing, {BR} it actually holds its own. {BR} I have drawn a naked man, {LG} and I feel like I can do anything. {LG} {BR}
- But things at home start to get a little tricky. {BR} My husband is an art director, {BR} one of the reasons why I married him, {BR} I loved being with somebody artsy, {BR} he seemed so exotic and interesting, {BR} he was the creative one {BR} and I was the business one. {BR} But when I started going to art school all the roles were off, the balance of power completely out of sync. {BR} So class continues for the next six weeks and it's an emotional roller coaster, I mean my thinking is shifting and breaking apart and I cry every day. {BR} And my final assignment is a wall installation, which is a term I didn't know existed six weeks before. {BR} And it includes these three wall sculptures, these sculptures made out of the new york times business sections and the wall street journal, {BR} all painted black. And they're bound in these really tight boxes, {BR} and each piece gets progressively more undone until the final piece explodes. {BR} And Bob the instructor that talked me off the ledge sees it, {BR} and he says, Tricia, you know, {BR} you really ought to apply to the museum school. {BR} Well, this thought had never occurred to me before, I mean in the back of my mind I'm gonna end up in business school, that {BR} this is a once in a lifetime event, I go back to my normal life, and {BR} I'm highly suspicious {BR} and then it occurs to me what's happening. {BR} He's hitting on me. {LG} I have no artistic talent at all, {BR} he's just flattering me until he can get lucky. {BR} And this theory sticks until I find out he's been in a committed relationship for the past eighteen years {BR} with his boyfriend. {LG} So then I start thinking of other reasons why they may want me to apply. {BR} Maybe they think I have a lot of money, {BR} and I'll be a big donor, cause I was working at harvard business school at the time, or {BR} maybe they think I know people who will be big donors, {BR} and so while I'm using all of my creative energy {BR} trying to imagine why I'm not creative, {BR} Charles, one of the instructors, comes up to me and says Tricia, you really ought to apply to the museum school, {BR} I mean you know you're an artist, you're one of us. Panic begins to set in. {BR} And I enroll in art school as a part time student but I'm still consulting. {BR} And I'm both excited {BR} and traumatized {BR} because for the first time in my life I am not following the rules. {BR} And I say to my dear friend Sarah, who's also a southerner. I say {BR} Sarah, {BR} I am so afraid of being different than everybody else. {BR} And she says oh Tricia, {BR} I'm so afraid of being just like everybody else. {BR} And my marriage begins to explode. {BR} And part of the reason is I'm not supposed to excel beyond men. {BR} Definitely not beyond my husband, but {BR} I have places I wanted to go, and he just wasn't moving fast enough, {BR} I kept pushing him to move faster, so I could move forward, {BR} and one day he just says to me, Tricia, you just want me to go places I don't wanna go.
- At art school, since we don't have grades, we have review boards. And at the end of each semester we put up all the work we've done and {BR} two instructors and several students review the work, give us feedback, and guide us on our creative path. {BR} And I'm driving to my review board in the jeep I've purchased for the yet to be conceived children I assume I'll have. {BR} But instead it's piled high with artwork. {BR} And at my review board one of the students writes this on his review board sheet: {BR} you seem to be a little frantic. {LG} {BR} Very perceptive. {BR} It has something to do with control. It's okay to let go, {BR} you're expecting this to be black or white, but the process won't allow that. You've got to let go. {BR} I'm not sure if he's talking about my artwork or my marriage. My husband and I separate, {BR} and a dear friend of mine says, you know Tricia I love my husband, {BR} and I love my children, but I never thought I had options. You have options. And she's right, because even though {BR} my life is blowing apart, or {BR} maybe because it is, I begin to really find my voice and step into my artwork, {BR} my mother sees it and says, {BR} why is it so dark? {LG} Why aren't there any heads? {LG} It's getting harder and harder to do my consulting work. {BR} And even though I'm getting paid a fire hose of cash, {BR} I know that if I do this work for much longer I'm gonna die. {BR} Slowly. But I'm gonna die. And I realize I'm not just in the wrong job, {BR} or the wrong marriage, I'm in the wrong life. I don't want to do what other people want me to do or think I should do anymore. All I want is to make art. {BR} I'm an artist. {BR}
- And the week we separate, they tear down my family home of twenty five years. {BR} And my jeep gets stolen. {BR} I have this keychain with three keys on it, one to the house I don't live in anymore, {BR} one to my family home that's been torn down, and one to my jeep that's been stolen. {LG} {BR} God is banging on my hood. {LG} So I toss the keys, head to art school, and join my tribe. {NS}
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