Abortion/Conviction

After seven aborted drafts and an electronically mailed kick in the butt from Lindsey, I've decided to set something down. You are all lucky that I hadn't found the time to finish up entries about relationships, art history, writing, sexism in politics, and some trip I took to Wesleyan in November. It was just too much information.

Over the last month or two, I've lost a job, failed some exams, screwed up my chance for a sublet, and failed at painting portraits so consistently that my professor told me to paint something that would make me happy (not faces!), because we were all miserable looking at the pathetic attempts at likenesses. And also, my room is a mess. To a disturbing degree.

But the important part of this night, tonight, April 17, 2008, is that I went to see Sokari Douglas Camp, a female, Nigerian-born, British artist, speak about her work. Usually, I am not so interested in these talks, and I am even more uninterested in the awful questions that get asked at the end of them. But tonight, I didn't care about the irrelevant questions, didn't much care about the fact that the fiancee of my now ex-boss was sitting in the front row, since she organized the talk-- tonight, I listened to a woman talk about her "attachment" to two countries, about being a woman, about her heritage, and being interested in physical manifestation and welding and boats and politics and the people who walk by her studio during the day. These were her convictions about her life experience and about her hopes for the political futures of the countries with which she feels a connection (without making claims about ownership of particular identities, whether racial or political or otherwise) and her desire to bring the vibrant memories of her Kalibari town to London.

And I realized that I have these convictions, too.

By some funny twist of fate, I have developed reputation as some kind of visual artist here at Harvard, something of a painter and a go-to graphic designer for publications--from literary journals to economics reviews to sex magazines. Sketches and portraits of folks from professors to classmates to strangers are done in lines rather than letters. Yet I never could call myself an "artist" the way I was pretty comfortable calling myself a "writer" before. I didn't have any conviction; I didn't have any purpose in my painting.

But now I see that I care, about being a woman, a girl, a Taiwanese -born American, a college student, a citizen, a lover, a daughter, and a friend. That I care about materials and experience and that these are all legitimate points of departure for making art. I still don't know how I feel about what it means in the cosmic scheme of things, but at least I have a reason to carry these paintings through.