More specifically, I am majoring in Fine Arts with an emphasis in Ceramics.
I took my first ceramics class (which was also my first real art class) as a Senior in High School - I was doing a program called Running Start at the time and consequently was simultaneously a Sophomore in college. I had a natural aptitude for numbers (at least as long as we stayed away from imaginary ones) and for science and was a world-class test-taker.
I discovered in this community college class, not a great aptitude for clay, but a great love for it. It was often frustrating, but always rewarding in the end.
Still, as I entered the (real) college scene, I figured I would make ceramics a hobby and search out my perfect career/major and began looking around. I looked into computer programming, dancing, writing, and so on. I even took a career exploration class and continued taking ceramics classes all the while. I began realizing that even classes I thought were interesting, I didn't ever lose myself in the work the way I did in ceramics. I could work for hours at a time - without food or breaks and never noticing the passage of time. Don't get me wrong, I was still frequently frustrated at my lack of skill and my incompetence in the field, but I could spend lots of time at it and work through all those frustrations.
The longer I went, the more I knew ceramics was exactly what I wanted to do. I was a Junior in college and needed to choose a major to make my schooling start counting for something. On the other hand, I couldn't draw, had never tried to paint or print or sculpt. I had no portfolio (or at least very little, and none of it very good). It was terribly impractical, but here I am.
When I finally made the decision, I talked to Von (our program head) and she made it happen. She helped me put together a make-shift portfolio, got me through the screening process, and even gave me a job as a technician in the studio. Everything fell into place and I have never yet questioned that decision once it had been made.
But I still struggle as an outsider, making my way into the art world - as much a foreign place as if it were located on a different continent to someone unfamiliar with it. And as someone with a tendency for analyzing, calculating, list-writing and other activities usually associated with the left side of the brain, I often feel left behind and discouraged, but I have learned so much and even discovered many right-brain tendencies I didn't know I had.
I like to tell people that I am living proof that anyone can learn to draw. And it's true. I'm impossibly slow at it, but can in fact render reasonable representations of the things I see - if they and the light will stay still long enough for me to do so.
At any rate, this is a VERY long way of saying that this blog is dedicated to my musings, assessments, comments, observations, etc. about this crazy thing we call art and an analytical individual finding her own path through it.
