Comment, Comment, Comment

I'm currently exploring the body. Specifically, our relationships with our body and how that can be changed by the views of others. This was all really sparked out of an interest in the work of Marc Quinn, and eventually his infamous statue of Allison Lapper. It's a really interesting piece of art work. It's a really brave piece of art work. But it shouldn't be. It shouldn't be brave to put a disabled, pregnant woman in a positive light. It shouldn't be questioned whether or not she is allowed to be pregnant, allowed to be beautiful, allowed to have her own agency. 

People have such an interest in other peoples bodies. What they do with it, how they dress it, what they put in it. Usually, this interest is framed as concern. Slut shaming becomes a worry of safety. Fat shaming becomes a concern of health. Skinny shaming becomes a query of mental health. To be perfectly honest, my belief is most of that is bullshit. People want a reason to involve themselves in others bodies, so they make up reasons in a veiled attempt to seem better, to seem like they have the 'best intentions'. 

A few days ago I asked people to submit stories of how other peoples views had altered their relationships with their bodies. Within 18 hour I had 6 A4 pages worth of story after story. In a pleasant surprise, there were more positive stories than I had thought there would be. 

But still, they were overwhelmingly negative. They were overwhelming about weight. The negative comments, the ones people could remember years later, were overwhelmingly made by parents. 

It's not a coincidence. There is something happening here, again and again and again. People, adults, projecting their own issues and thoughts and fears onto kids, teens, other adults. 

So today I physically projected stories onto a mannequin. 

This has lit a fire under me. The Allison Lapper story pissed me off. I don't like how people feel they have a right to her, or anyone elses, bodies. There is something I want to say here, and I'm going to keep going until I say it.

Spinning Stories

These past few weeks have been tough. These past few years have been tough. 

I love art, I love learning about it. I love creating it. But the type of art I love is brutal. It's honest and vulnerable and based in real experiences, most of them fairly unpleasant. It's the sort of stuff I like seeing and it's the sort of stuff I love to create.

When I was about 16 I created a series of extremely personal and invasive photographs. I wasn't all that scared of putting them out there. I just did it. In fact some of the most intensely personal photos I've ever taken are on a wall in my school school, open for anyone to view. But the lack of caring wasn't bravery, it was numbness. I was numb. I was out of my head and suicidal and so so ill. I just didn't care and that wasn't good.

Then I clamped up. I created work that was completely separate from me and was so sensitive to anything being seen that I couldn't really even cope with critiques. 

Now I'm in college and I'm opening up. It's scary but it's what I want. I'm in control. The final outcome I created for this project was personal but in a different way. It alluded to things, it told parts of stories but never the ending. The stories I told were hand picked and the parts I told were chosen specifically to spell out a very particular message. 

And the funny thing is I'm just as in the dark as the audience. I let my class mates and tutor read through the stories and have no way of knowing what conclusion each of them came to. They could have it entirely wrong but they could also have it entirely right. You can try to guide an audience but at the end of the day I believe art in all it's form belongs to it's audience.

 There has to be a point you give up the control and just let people take what they need to, which might be nothing, but it might be everything. You never know.

Happiness found in design

Four weeks in and over all I'd say college is exactly what I need at this point in my life. It's not perfect. It's doesn't live up to my worst fears or my biggest hopes. It's nice. It's stable. The past 10 years of my life have been permanently unstable. It's nice to feel like I actually know what is going to be going on a month from now. It's calming.

The first project was a drawing project. I was pleased with my outcome, especially considering I despise drawing and am openly pretty bad at it. But in the group crit I was looking at other peoples work, particularly Tasha's, and I realized how little of me was in my work. There was nothing personal, no message, nothing. That's good, and it's bad. I like making pretty things. But I also like making unpretty things.

So in starting the design project, I had that in the back of my mind. But I didn't think design was really the project to get personal, to focus on concept. It's design, it's meant to be clean. The thing this course is teaching me is that nothing is what I thought it was. Drawing can have nothing to do with paper and pencil. Design can be raw and conceptual. It's confusing but I love it.

Coming up to the final group crit I wasn't sure what to present. I had a safe bet, a concept I believed in and a mystery project. One that had sort of came out of no where but that presented the opportunity to get personal. And to explore words. I love words. I love writing. Combine words with art and you have my favorite place in the world.

I went with my gut. I ignored my head and just created. I found myself in my favorite area of art. Personal meets words meets photography. And then finally, join that all up with instillation. 

Instillations are not meant to be photographed, they are meant to be seen. But my office isn't transportable, so photographs had to do. I like the photographs more than I thought I would, but they can't really compare to the feeling of standing in a dark room with nothing but one light having to duck under strings and hanging plastic to watch the shadows. 

I love studying art. It can be frustrating and confusing and it's a whole lot of work, but every now and again you get a moment where you're looking at something you've created and you're just happy. It's something you can't really beat.

War of the Words

A lot of you guys are going to know this, but just in case I'm going to explain a bit about my current health situations. I'm Kelly, and I'm mentally ill. I'm currently in recovery for an eating disorder, and am being treated for depression, several anxiety disorders and a few other bits and pieces. I've been in and out of therapy since I was 14, and I deal with a lot of crap on a daily basis because of my stuff.

Last night I wrote a small post on my personal blog about how I was struggling with my ED recovery in relation to how I look, and not really feeling like anyone around me liked the way I looked. I wasn't really expecting a response, other than maybe someone to offer to let me vent to them as I have amazing friends on here that are always willing to listen when I have my moments. Instead I got a bunch of compliments about the photos on my blog and on my instagram. I was super, super overwhelmed. I was surprised and shocked and wasn't sure what to say other than thank you. But the later on I started doubting them. Making excuses and reasons for myself so that I wouldn't believe a handful of the not very many compliments I've ever had on my looks.

RIght now I'm in the process of removing my filter. That's what I'm calling the way I've been taught to see the world, which is to see the world through the idea that I am worth very little. To think that my weight is the thing that is stopping me from being accepted and loved and happy. To think that my value is nothing if my body is still like this. But that was a lie. It was a lie that was taught to me through years abuse from someone who should have been looking after me, and it's a lie that I have been believing for a very, very long time. 

I am worth more than my looks. I am worth more than a number or a size. My body's value is not in it's beauty. My body's value is in that it has saved my life, several times. My body has protected me and saved me and looked after me more than anyone else every has. It's kept me alive through all of the crap I've put it through, and it's stayed strong when my mind was entirely broken. 

But I don't think it's unreasonable to also want to feel attractive. I don't think it's wrong to also want to feel lovely and strong and kind and beautiful, all at the same time. And I think the worst lie that I've ever told myself is that I cannot be both myself and be beautiful. That I cannot be both strong and kind. That I cannot be both mentally and physically at peace. Because I can. I can be beautiful and fat and strong and wobbly and soft and harsh and at peace every other thing that I want to be.

Sometimes it's hard to swallow that. When you've spent a very long time believing something, that belief doesn't disappear. And when you live in a culture where wonderful girls are taught they aren't enough until they are a size X, then girls who are a size X are taught they aren't enough until they are the next thing or the next thing or the next thing, it can be tough to look in the mirror and see a body that so many people would deem 'unacceptable.' 

And because of this, I'm going to take every single genuine compliment and I'm going to cherish it. I'm going to stop closing my eyes because it's easier to hate myself than fight society and every word my mother ever said to me. Instead I'm going to have my eyes and my ear wide open and I'm to take every nice word that is given to me and I'm going to write it out. And then I'm going to post it on my wall or my wardrobe or anywhere else that it will be visible and where it will be seen. This is still a battle and these words are going to be part of my weaponry. 

When I showed this to my therapist, she talked about a man who used to paint as a way of understanding his own psychology. When someone said he created art, he was offended. He said it was not art but the inner workings of his mind.

Art is deliberate, thought out. The way I think of it is this is the stuff before the art. This is the pain and the suffering and the reflection. This is the mind map that will lead to everything else.

There are lots of words that fill up my head and sometimes they need to come out.

I explored the sea again. The shapes stick with me. I purposely composed the piece on the other side of the paper so that it would show through in this one, so it would become a part of this one. 

There are many shapes and colours and words covering up what is underneath. 

My hope is that one day I'll have someone who gets to see it all.

This piece is actually too big for me to be able to photograph fully. I quite like this version of it though, I feel like it might actually by more meaningful with a few of the sections missing. 

I wanted to create a mural of my spaces. It didn't work. I got pissed off. I decided I wanted it to be something else instead. I turned it into this. 

I love ink. I love the way it can be controlled but also the way it has a mind of it's own. You can let go a little bit in this sort of work as you'll never have full control anyway, so why not just go with it. Get physical and let it become something else, something you probably couldn't create if you tried to.

Presented without commentary. 

I feeling a bit exhausted right now. Can't quite figure out if it's physical or mental. Putting this stuff out here, I do think it affects me. Or maybe it isn't even the putting the art out as much as it is writing about it. The funny thing is I have thought about these pieces a lot, I've said the things I'm typing to myself, I've already had these thoughts. But there is a big difference between a thought in your head and words on a screen.

This piece is pretty important to me. The inspiration was my childhood, much/most of which was spent at my Gran's flat. Her living room window overlooked the beach and the sea. When I think of my childhood, I think of the beach. I think of the sea and I think of the waves. I'm not sure if it's overly analyzing to say I probably have a deeper connection to the sea than I would have by just living near it.

This is the image that comes to my head. Not calm water or sunny days or not so sunny days. The image is stormy and violent and beautiful all in one. I cherish the image but when it's put there in front of me it's a strange mix of scary and pretty. Which pretty much sums up my childhood, if I'm honest.

There were good moments but they were much further apart than they should have been, especially when I got older. And there were ugly moments. Horrible, terrifying moments that seem more horrifying the further I get away from them. 

But I also see my bad experiences as some sort of twisted blessing. I gained empathy and selflessness and an awareness that I don't think I could have gotten any other way. I'm in no way grateful for the ugliness but I think it has to have a purpose. It has to have a reason and I have to give it that.

If I were to throw everything it gave me away, it would just been for nothing.

I don't want my experiences to be nothing.

This piece is a development of a style that I found to be really interesting. One of the first pieces I created (discussed and pictured here) looked at a word that meant a lot to me. I then explored my feelings about the word through colour and texture, using the word as a sort of template. 

There are a lot of similarities about how I feel about the word in this image and the word in the first one. I'm extremely conflicted on both. I have a lot of contradicting feelings, ones that seem to cancel others out. I also have lots of extremely strong opinions about both words as subjects, specifically about how people are treated and thought of by society when part of either subject. 

Visually, I'm drawn to this style. Not only in my own work but also in art in general. I like colour, I like texture, I like art that has a physicality to it. I like to be able to see the artists motions and movements through their art. I like to feel something, and I like to see that the artist felt something when they were creating.

I haven't returned to this style since this piece, but it's definitely something I would like to revisit. 

I'll admit now that I was not sure I wanted to post this piece. It's an important one, but it's also extremely personal. Although it's strange that I find this to be more personal that others since a lot of other pieces are about subjects that I keep a lot closer to my chest than my eating disorder, which is what this work is really all about.

I guess it's because it's largely expressed through text. Colour and shape and form are all ways of expressing things too, but they can be subjective. They are arguably much harder to understand than words and sentences. 

The work is made up of layers of plastic. Within the first two layers is a lot of ink, enclosed inside with spray glue. There are also layers of pastels and oil pastels. The front (shown) and back are covered in words. I decided to enjoy show the view of the front of this piece as the back contains information I'm not quite ready to share yet. But it essentially works as two sides of the same coin. Both sides contain only facts. Things I know to be completely true. I made this at a time where I was struggling with my own truth, with what I believed to be true.

There are things I know and things I believe. Sometimes I have a hard time telling those things apart. 

Since I've got quite a backlog of work I have decided to upload a few select pieces from the past few months. I'm uploading then chronologically, so this is the first. This was not the first piece I created, but I feel like it's the best place to start.

I tend to work in a cycle of doodling and full pieces. This was the first full piece I created in this cycle, and the image below is of the doodle in this first cycle.

Visually I personally don't see many, if any, links between the two pieces. However I think the way I've found my head works best is if I do sometime very scribble like first that doesn't really have much shape or form, and that clears my head so I can figure out what I'm really thinking about. The main piece as pretty much just done on instinct. I wanted it to be bold and I think it fills that requirement. I also think the physicality of it is just as important as the other elements, although it's hard to really see that from a photo.

It was quite hard work, physically. A lot of blending. It's actually pretty therapeutic, this sort of work.

Almost like the therapy is in the making of it rather than in the end result.

Introduction

My name is Kelly. I'm starting this blog for a few reasons, the most important of which being that I want to share my experience of art therapy. I've been creating art as part of my therapy for years off and on, however a few months back it became a main component of my work. 

This blog is as much as a way for me to log my work as it is anything else. I've started producing more work than I can talk about in my therapy sessions, meaning sometimes pieces get lost or I lose thoughts of certain bits before I get a chance to talk about them. In this blog I want to share select pieces of the work and discuss what they mean to me and how they link in with my recovery.

For quite a while I have a kept a written journal of my recovery here, so this blog will be completely focused on the art side of my therapy.

Kelly