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Artist Bio

What To Do When Your Brain Says “NOPE!”

Some spicy discussions are happening about what classifies as an actual disability, and when accommodations are reasonable just as we’ve tied up Disability Pride Month after a video of a distraught young woman shared an unpleasant job interview experience. She was allegedly yelled at by the interviewer after being asked if there would be leniency and accommodation for her time blindness. Being tossed around are accusations of faking disability when one is really just lazy, “this never used to be a problem!”, comments of how this younger generation has no resilience or willpower, and more.

I’ve worked with individuals with disabilities for over a decade now, and I can say that time blindness can be a very real thing. It is often a symptom of ADHD (though, nothing is across the board – I also know people with ADHD that are early for everything!). It is fair to say we are seeing more cases of ADHD now, which is why this and other issues may seem more common. Whether that can be linked to the different way we interface with technology compared to the past, diet, the fact that are school system is built upon making children sit in one room and listen to someone talk for 6+ hours, or other factors I’m not going to get into because I’m not an expert so what I have to say would mostly be speculation. I also think it’s fair to say we as a society are struggling with resiliency, but I’d also argue life has become exceedingly more complicated, and resiliency is really a moot point when your brain just won’t cooperate with you on a given task. I’ve had employees work under me who I would legitimately have to remind on a weekly basis when they were to come in to teach their class, even though they taught at 2:00 on Tuesday for example, the same time every week for 4 months. At first I thought they were putting me on, until I realized they honestly couldn’t get a handle on remembering their schedule, even sometimes after writing it down.

I have my own “stuff” as we all do, and I can tell you there is nothing more infuriating and painful than repeatedly being told you’d be better at something if you’d only try, when you have poured every fiber of energy you have into trying only to see no improvement. I have a funny little thing that is referred to in layman’s terms as “location blindness”. What’s interesting is, usually people that have this acquired it due to traumatic brain injury, but I just got lucky and have always been like this. I have the complete inability to retain directional information or orient myself in space. I have always had an above-excellent visual memory, so it isn’t like I don’t remember what different places look like, I just can’t fit the puzzle pieces together. It’s all details, no big picture. I have to use GPS to get to the same grocery store I’ve used in town for the past 10 years. When I was first learning to drive, I noticed things just weren’t clicking into place as I’d assumed they would, so I would study directions to places I frequent like one would study for an exam. It did absolutely nothing for this almost straight A student … I still couldn’t tell you how to get from point A to point B. If I get up in a restaurant to go to the bathroom, I have to very deliberately focus on the exact turns “right, left, right again…” that I made as I left my seat and repeat them in my head the whole time like a mantra or I won’t find my seat again, which is always super embarrassing. I recall asking my doctor about it and her saying though the degree to which I seem to have trouble is not as common, it’s not dangerous just wildly inconvenient.

Another struggle that’s a bit less important, wheels and I are not friends. I just barely learned to ride a bike without training wheels before junior high, and I never learned to roller-skate or rollerblade. I made renewed attempts during COVID lockdown when I had copious amounts of time on my hands, and made 0% progress sadly. I recall countless roller arena end of the school year parties growing up, because 90s kid, where I was sitting on the sidelines trying to look like I was having fun and well meaning adults would come up to me and say, “Well I feel bad that you’re sitting here by yourself, but we all make choices about what we want to spend time practicing …” If looks could kill, well …

Oftentimes I wonder if these two funny little mental blocks are related, as both seem to have to do with orientating oneself in space, one physically the other mentally. Who knows … The whole point of these odd little tales is to illustrate the fact that sometimes our brain just says “NO, I WILL NOT,” when it comes to certain things. It’s more difficult when the things our brain refuses to do are common skills that it seems like the majority of others have no problem with. Most people that don’t understand a mental block or question its validity aren’t actually trying to be jerks, they just honestly don’t know what they don’t know. And yes, it’s ok to ask for accommodations and sometimes it will be necessary. However, when we can come up with tools and tricks for ourselves to get around our brain’s refusal it’s not just about pleasing other people. Doing this will also make our own life way easier and less stressful. For my location blindness, aside from using GPS I can when possible check out new locations ahead of time if I have to be there for something important, and leave early enough to accommodate for directional errors or unforeseen circumstances like construction that may throw off my route. Saying “Well, I guess someone has to drive me everywhere because I can’t do this” would only hurt myself and my ability to have a life at all and enjoy opportunities both professionally and for my own pleasure. With time blindness, alarms and reminders can be set to assist with being ready. Even if you have to set 15 alarms before work in the morning, one for waking up one for brushing your teeth, another when it’s time to make breakfast, and so on to dictate the schedule of your whole morning routine… do what helps no matter how silly it may seem to other people. Conversely, when someone shares that they are struggling with something, believe them. There’s not really any logical motivation for faking a difficulty when of course we’d all prefer that everything came easy to us.

I had the wonderful opportunity to lead a community mural in Madison Heights for their ADA Pride Celebration the end of last month, the prompt being “If the inside of your mind were a physical place, what would it look like?” This concept really connects well to these thoughts I’ve just discussed … We don’t know what the landscape of each other’s minds looks like, so listening before assuming is always best.

I will be part of a show at Creative 360‘s satellite location in downtown Midland opening mid this month that celebrates neurodiverse creators and creators with disabilities, so if you are in the area be sure to visit!

What is a struggle you have that you wish there was more understanding about? Let me know in the comments.

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New Work

Fruits Series : Gentleness / Mixed Media Surrealism

A year later, I have finished the second installment of my Fruits Of The Spirit series, Gentleness. (Visit this link to view my first, Peace.) I certainly don’t plan to take an year to get to each installment of this 10 part series, but I spent 2022 dipping my toe into a lot of new things career-wise, and ultimately deciding what my personal goals were and how I wanted to go forward. I was also focused a lot on teaching art and developing curricula, which helped propel what I’m doing this year forward. Having time once again to revisit my own personal art has been like going on an exciting vacation, and I think I like this 2nd installment even better than my first! Below is a video in which I give some extra background on my thoughts behind this piece and the series itself.

Ever in love with mixed media, I used colored pencil for the face and hands, acrylic for the torso, sky, and water, ink for the birds and egg, and fabric for the mountains, sun, and flowers. The face, hands, egg, and bird were all one piece on mixed media paper. I finished this first, then cut it out and traced it where I wanted it on my canvas. Next I painted all the acrylic straight on the canvas. Once the acrylic was dry, I glued the paper piece down, and following that I used tracing paper to create patterns for all my fabric pieces and glued those on last. Gluing the paper especially is really a ‘trust the process’ moment. Even though I have done mixed media work like this so many times now, I always get nervous adhering the paper bits to canvas because there is a period while it is drying that it looks VERY wavy. It inevitably settles down once it dries, but that doesn’t help my nerves! For any artists out there looking to adhere paper drawings to canvas, I’ve found Aleen’s Tacky Glue works best after trying various super glues, Elmer’s, mod podge, special paper adhesive for scrapbooking, clear sealing mediums … After gluing I lay the canvas face down on a piece of vellum paper (to prevent sticking if any of the glue seeps out from the edges), and set heavy flat objects like books, boxes, etc. inside the frame to keep it pressed overnight. I use mixed media paper because it is a great base for any drawing medium and can even withstand a moderate amount of wetness, an important quality since I know glue will be involved.

I have started my 3rd part of this series already, and will try to be better about taking video throughout the process this time. Follow me for more updates as I go forward on this series, and I’m sure some other projects in between :).

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New Work

Happiest Places

Happy Spring, a time of new beginnings and new art! I had been working on this 3’x3′ piece since the beginning of the year, inspired by a photograph I took at the Japanese Cultural Center in town when I first moved to Saginaw. I used both metallic and traditional acrylics and fabric. Like my other mixed media landscapes, I chose colors that captured what I feel within the place I am painting, not necessarily the true colors from nature.

Most of my art is very heavy in symbolism and story. Those pieces are invigorating to work on, but every so often I need to draw or paint something where the process is more relaxing, and simply celebrates one of my happy places.

2023 has been all about finding my happiest places, not just physically but mentally as well. I had a series of consecutive high stress years that I didn’t even fully recognize as such until I reached severe, shutdown level burnout. I don’t think even the closest people in my life aside from my parents know how truly bad it got. Part of this stress was circumstantial and completely out of my control, but some of it came from the fact that I was trying to make certain parts of my life fit together that were just never going to, like that toy we give to toddlers where they have to fit the different shaped plastic pieces into the corresponding holes. No matter how long they try to push a moon shape into a star opening, it is not going to fit. One of the most valuable things I took away from therapy over the last 3 years was “Don’t live in the land of shoulds”. I had a constant internal dialogue of guilt and shame going, “___ shouldn’t bother me, I shouldn’t be so tired, I shouldn’t be getting overwhelmed, I should have ___ by now, I shouldn’t react like ___ …” There is really not much point ruminating over what should or shouldn’t be, because reality still exists and that energy is better spent doing what we can to change what we don’t like about it rather than chastising ourselves for how we are wired.

Starting in January, I made the big scary decision to make a career transition to entirely contracted and freelance work focusing mainly on different avenues of teaching, as well as other art and design related services. I read a short blurb I happened upon while scrolling before bed the other night that said we as humans basically operate under the assumption that everything is supposed to suck (“work isn’t supposed to be fun!” “life is hard!” “everyone is tired!” “no one gets to do what they want!”), but who decided that? Is this really the best way?

Don’t ever accept a life devoid of joy, but don’t run from struggle either. Yes, life is hard but we get to choose what kind of hard. Not in all circumstances but in many, we get to pick the “hard” that we want to deal with. I made a lot of pretty serious changes around how I spend my time this year, not only with the career switch but in the way I spend time socially as well. I’m an introvert/extrovert blend for sure but I do get some serious communication fatigue. I am no longer giving time to people out of feelings of obligation, and I am no longer wasting time on outings I’m not interested in just to please others. Never fear, I have actually not become a hermit! I still go out and do fun things and socialize, but I have a lot more energy and am a lot less stressed now when I choose to do so. These changes aren’t magic, things are still hard, but it is the right type of hard (for me) and that makes all the difference.

I love teaching in person, but not everyone that wants to learn some of my techniques lives in an area where this is possible so I am open to teaching private or group lessons virtually! If this is of interest, don’t hesitate to reach out.

What changes have you made lately that made you feel more joyful?

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Artist Bio

Living Without Limits, & Learning To Love Surprises

My new year began with some disappointments and being laid out with a wretched cold, so rather than sulk I thought it was a good time to pen this entry I’d been thinking about for awhile. Hopeful messages are good medicine for the brain at least ;). The first week of January is a time that seems to be made for reflecting, as a new season begins and things are still slow after the rush of the holidays. As I made some professional changes this year that will allow me to put my whole focus into not only my own art business but teaching, something I’ve discovered I love doing no matter the age or ability level I am working with, I feel compelled to share something about myself that many may not know.

Though I now talk all day as my vocation, this is not something I originally would have thought possible. I had a speech delay which I went to therapy for as a young child. It was discovered I knew and understood words, but just wasn’t saying them. I’ve been told even as a baby I was quiet, no babbling or anything, just silence and the occasional prolonged grunt that sounded like a lawnmower motor. I can only imagine what my parents must have been thinking! Though I was soon able to communicate fluently at home, around people I wasn’t as familiar with it was still a struggle. No one that heard me playing in the backyard at home would ever think of me as being “reserved”. Still at school, which I found for the most part enjoyable, I just didn’t know how to communicate with others. I remember one of my most embarrassing 5-year-old moments was when I got called out while playing in a group for participating in the imaginative play by just repeating whatever my best friend made her dinosaur say over and over (We were all playing with plastic dinosaurs at the indoor sandbox station, THE best station in the entire kindergarten). “Why do you just keep saying what she’s saying?” I was asked, followed by the dreaded “You’re weird!” Sigh … my camouflage had failed. When playing by myself I could think up all sorts of great lines and fantastical stories – I was never short on creativity – I didn’t understand why I couldn’t get my brain to “work” around other people.

Even up to high school I experienced a degree of what I now know is called “selective mutism” in public spaces, though public speaking or giving formal presentations in front of a group never bothered me a bit. In college, I ended up choosing to study interior design and had also thought about web design, because I figured there would be a little bit of back and forth interface with clients since I did enjoy people and hated being entirely alone, but then I could go back into my little office space and be creative without constant social pressures – the perfect balance. What do they say about the best laid plans?

I had an English teacher in high school once tell the class “Who you are at 10 years old is your truest self, and you will always come back to that”. I think about that often. As an 8-10 year old kid, I thought I wanted to be a teacher and loved “playing school” with my dolls so much that my parents even got me special little stamps and grade books from the local teacher supply store to enhance the realism of my playacting. I volunteered as a helper for kids programs in the summer, and even job shadowed at my old elementary school when it was required in my first year of middle school. However, I found it stressful not knowing how a real person was going to act and react, whereas with my dolls I was writing the script. I never did like surprises.

I pretty much wrote off that future life plan as I became a teenager, realizing I just didn’t have the skills for it. After graduating from college and experiencing a parade of poorly fitting jobs and pretty toxic work environments which is its own story for another day, I got an email from some mailing list I was on advertising that a local gallery was looking for instructors for a new day program. At this point in my life my confidence in my ability to be a functional human was at an all time low, so I decided what the hell, at least I know I can do art. Let’s give this a go. The rest is history.

I personally have a faith, and I believe receiving that email (and the fact that I actually opened and read it at just the right time!) was quite literally divine intervention. I teach at a variety of locations now outside of my main “hub” where I started, but I truly believe if I hadn’t began my foray into art instruction with the Artshop prograrm at Creative 360 in an environment of radical acceptance that embraces people’s quirks and operates like its own odd little family, I probably wouldn’t have kept at it. The main point of all this personal storytelling is, don’t limit yourself.

What you can do at the moment is not all you’ll be able to do forever. Sometimes, it isn’t that there is something wrong with you, it’s that you aren’t in the right environment.

I am in no way doing what I thought I’d be doing when I was 18, but my 10 year old self may not be that surprised. Guess what? I still am terrible at socializing with new people and making friends. But, I’ve been told I’m a wonderful teacher and that I make people feel valued, and help them believe they can do things they never thought they could do. I’m good with that.

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