 |
| Spring of 2000 in the Sherman Gallery at BU |
 |
| Winter of 2016 in the Sherman Gallery at BU |
16 years ago on the same walls of the same gallery, I completed my MFA in Studio Teaching at Boston University. The final exhibition was a display of our own artwork next to our students' work. The children came to the show and proudly smiled in front of their artwork. I feel the need to share with you that the little boy in the photo above would now be about 24 years old (older than I was in that photo).
Following this show, I began working as an art educator.
Last night on the same walls of the same gallery, I had a solo exhibition titled It's not you, it's me. I took photos with family and friends in front of the works in the show. The picture above shows a handful of supportive art colleagues from the AIB/LUCAD low residency MFA family. A degree I completed two years ago as I began working on the piece titled Two Years pictured behind us.
Things do feel very different than 16 years ago when I showed work in that gallery. I have so many more life experiences now, I felt compelled to dye the gray our of my hair before the opening reception, I am married and no longer breaking up with boys like I was back then (some evidence of this can be seen in the piece titled 381 Minutes of Letters from Past Relationships), I am still teaching and I am still working as a practicing artist (which is no small feat while you are teaching so often).
As an artist, I have grown so much since then. As a teacher, 16 years later and I am still doing that same crayon engraving project pictured above. It is a good project, but still it makes me question whether things have changed enough. You don't realize these things when you start out, but you do hit a point when there is not much growth left in teaching elementary art in a public school system. I am not good a being complacent. There is endless room for growth and expansion when you are an artist. Ideally, there would be a delicate balance between the two, but what happens when the balance goes out of whack?
I am hopeful that this exhibition may be a pivotal point just as the last show in this gallery was. Sometimes we change and something was once a good fit is no longer… that's when we need to have the courage to say, " It's not you, it's me". Nobody likes having to be the one to say this, but that hasn't stopped me yet…
 |
| 393 minutes of my graduate thesis (on left) 381 minutes of letters from past relationships (on right) |
