The Language of Art and Spirit

I am an artist and a person with a considered spiritual life. The language of spirit, like the language of art, can feel intimidating. There is a potential for intellectualism of both that can put one off, can cause one to feel less than, to feel uninvited. The language of art and spirituality can make it feel like there is a learning curve until one reaches fluency. Of course, we will always take inspiration from others and we will delight in the clarifying that others do through their own scholarship and thoughtfulness – and their knowledge enhances and informs our self-knowledge. Yet, the world of both art and spirit is also very simple to navigate when you can embrace a language and a view that stems from yourself, from your experience, your hopes and dreams rather than from a studied perspective. To be on the path – creatively and spiritually – requires ownership of one’s practice. It requires that one look within for their validation, to trust that self-knowledge is significant. It requires that we are, in fact, the authority of our paths.

Way back when… one April morning, when I was struggling to fit the model of a college student, I tried to drop out of school. I went to school in New Orleans, at Newcomb College which was part of Tulane University. I remember clearly sitting across from the counselor saying “I want to drop out…”  and she instantly replied, “young lady, Newcomb girls don’t drop out… you just get an alarm clock and get yourself to class and carry on.” My decision to stay in college was made in that speedy conversation of about 2 sentences. In rebellion (I thought) I decided fine – I’ll just take art class since the intro to ceramics class I was currently in was the only class I was enjoying right then. So, I signed up for 3 art classes and played the role of a good Newcomb Girl.

Looking at how I would have described myself at that age – I would have told you I wasn’t creative at all, that I had no artistic talent, that I didn’t know anything about being an artist, so signing up for art classes seemed like a huge act of rebellion and revenge, although I’m not clear on who the target of my revenge would have been. Now, with the advantage of time and perspective, being able to see the path that my life as travelled so far, I see how far myself reflection veered from the truth. I was a big theater kid. I was stage hand, set designer, backstage crew for every show from 7^th grade to 12^th grade. I did theater over the summer at community theaters and professional theaters. I loved the smell of the stage, the dust that covered me everyday as I worked curtains, built flats, moved platforms, used power tools with great deftness. I was lucky to work under incredible mentors and knew that I had a found a passion that I thought would last me a lifetime. I went to college to study set design and saw my future in some form of technical theater. Clearly, we can all see that this is a creative path, we can all see that I had to have some skill and talent in creative thinking to follow a passion so intensely. But while on the path, I never saw it that way – I was doing theater, I wasn’t being creative; the two didn’t merge for me as being paths on the same road.

Naturally, moving over to Studio Art proved to be the right course. I found a language for my world in art, I found a path to expression that I hadn’t previously known. I found a way to communicate intelligently which I hadn’t experienced before. I loved the language of art and I understood it easily – I could easily discern the myriad of “isms” and movements; I could discuss line, tone, gesture, texture, narrative all day. I loved critiques we would have regularly where we would defend our work, inquire on the intention and methods of others.

I started to study art education with the vision of being an art teacher. I became righteously indignant of the way our culture un-teaches art. Children make art intuitively but it is only a matter of time before adults are telling them that bananas are always yellow and that their interpretive purple line cannot possibly represent a banana. Adults are quick to steer the language of children’s art into clearly identifiable symbols – bananas are yellow, grass green, houses square-ish, good self-portraits look like the artist. Adults work to remove the creative, the interpretive dance kids do in an effort to push “skill” and “ability”. It takes no time at all before kids are divided into “talented” and, well, “not talented in art” and to be not talented in art is just a tiny tweak away from not being creative.

I have been an artist for 25 years now. I still can’t “draw” at all – I can’t make you a horse that looks like a horse, but I can express myself, I can convey what I want to say, I can make dynamic and emotive pictures. I learned that I could do this through language in art classes – I learned the words that would back up my images and sculptures. By being immersed in a community that spoke the same language, I learned to defend my vision, to defend my images with language. I found a home where my creative spirit could rest and play.

As the years went by, I struggled again with my art – wanting to belong to an “ism” or a group that had an identity. I was not a landscape artist by any means, nor a realist, nor a person who worked with found objects, nor a performance artist. Again and again, I searched for a home for my identity. I searched for peers and paths that would validate me and allow me to feel embraced in a warm welcoming. I didn’t find it, or rather, I didn’t identify it when I was in the presence of like minded folk. I was continually comparing myself to others – gauging my success against theirs, my art practice versus theirs and so on. Only when I was actually creating art, on my own, did I feel the dance of my creative spirit, the certainty of my path.

My spiritual life has been almost identical. I was raised as a holiday Catholic. I took the appropriate steps to validate a spiritual life – I did my First Communion, Confirmation and then immediately stop feeling any kinship with the Church. But, I didn’t fit the model of even a non-participating Catholic. I had a strong intuitive sense about my spiritual life. I knew that I knew something, but I also knew that it wasn’t fitting into the world I was living it. I started to explore the world, I read Shirley McClaine, I read The Mists of Avalon, and I craved stories of how people found their way through the world, how they framed their beliefs and how they languaged their reality. I found a warm, welcoming place in literature – a place where language could support what I knew to be true in my own heart. Language supported what I knew to be true. I could put language in my pocket and use it to express my spiritual outlook. I could support my own beliefs in the stories of other.

When I would have discussions with others of their beliefs, many had views that fit into a theological box – they were members of a religious sect, some mainstream and some not. And I found again, that I searched for a box to live in, I searched for a place to let my spiritual self rest. I couldn’t find it in the world of others. I continued to build my own spiritual world – beliefs that would structure my internal world and that, overtime, have become such a part of me that I have become a fundamentalist of my own beliefs.

Like creativity and art, I realized that the ability to discuss my spiritual life resided in language – similar to not feeling like I belong to any artistic movement, “ism”, general school of thought, I found my spiritual life didn’t fit into any theological framework. I liked pieces here and there – belief was formed but when I looked at any formulated theology, I could not subscribe to the entire package – and I also could not overlook pieces of a religions theology to support my own belief.

As the years passed, I met more and more people who would have a similar experience – an experience of finding their own path through the world of the spiritual, paths that didn’t fit model or institutions that existed. And at the same time, I met many people who dismissed my path as not true, not “real” because it wasn’t validated by an outside community.  I was quickly intimated by the language of other’s religions – I didn’t know the Bible, I didn’t know the Jewish holidays and traditions, I continually felt like an outsider because I didn’t have the language and stories of others. Language became a barrier to my settling into my spiritual life – I felt like I “should” know more, I should learn more, I should join some system that already existed.

In the past years, I have been able to make the profound shift to accepting my path as a true path, my spiritual experiences and my journey as an equally valid and engaged journey as anyone elses. I can see, looking back at the arc of my life, where my journey hit landmarks and touchstones that significantly deepened my learning and beliefs. I can see where happenstance caused a change in the direction of my path and how I would not be who I am without that. I learned how to talk about my life story in light of a spiritual, known story. I learned how to identify my life as a Spirited Life.