Let's Be Makers Again

"Let's Be Makers Again."

Those are the words spoken by Japanese American artist Makoto Fujimura during his encouraging musings on art, religion, and life on his personal YouTube channel during the start of the pandemic we are all living through now. In a world where hope seems scarce, Makers have a unique role to encourage and inspire, and to invite their viewers into their world--to make them feel as the artist felt. There is the potential for authentic community in that exchange between artist and audience, if only there is the patience to consider forms of beauty not always outright evident. But the audience is not the only person who needs the experience of making. So too does the Maker, the Artist. And there is something insidious that happens in the psyche of a maker who stops making.

Some of us were truly built to be makers. It is in our blood. It is in our soul. We were simply made to use these hands of ours and to emote physically with the tools of paint or clay or light. When we turn away from that very nature, try to fit into the boxes provided to us by the rest of the world, we lose the very sparks which give us life. Something awful happens as the lost outlet infects our ability to move about the world--the melancholy takes over, mental illness and despair have an open door to creep in and let us believe lies about ourselves. Lost is the spark of life.

Last night, I sat down with a friend and colleague to explore our joint experiences as artists and illustrators--and we both discovered that we suffered silently through long seasons NOT making. The stresses of life simply took over--and then it became real easy to believe this lie that we are alone in our experiences of solitude, and find ourselves a mere husk of the potential we once embodied. The conversation got me thinking about those years I had given up, and what drove me back.

You see, dear friend, I put down my drawing pencils for close to fifteen years. Yes, you read the right. A decade an a half.

The season was sparked by a personal medical crisis. I was in that place where I needed to relearn basic living tasks in the wake of the diagnosis of my chronic medical condition. I watched all of my potential as a budding artist and writer fall away that year in the need to find health insurance suddenly as my body was failing me. I readjusted. I did the typical artist thing and worked as a barista for close to a decade. I still craved art at this time, even though I lost the spark to create my own. So, I earned my first Bachelor's degree in Art History, where I could still sit and absorb all the stories of the Masters of the creative crafts who have gone before me. After that, I followed that love of art and artifact to a lower level museum job, and then also a few part time church nursery gigs. I moved on with life because I needed to at the time, but depression and anxiety crept in hard at those times, sometimes even taking over.

It was the birth of my daughter that spurned me to rediscover my pencils. She is my greatest joy, but my first few years as a mother nearly broke me, both physically and mentally. My body will always carry the internal scars, but I'll be damned if my psyche continues to falter. And the best thing a parent can be is an example of who to be. What good will I be as a mother if I let her believe that it is an acceptable thing to give up on one's dream? I am tremendously lucky. I had a father who was witnessing my inner fall to darkness and gave me a way out. I went back to school, and am in pursuit of a career as an art teacher. I also rediscovered my hands, and have turned my love of drawing the figure into an exploration of the inner psyche on one's flesh.

I am learning to see beauty in the scars.

I am learning how to be a maker again.

I am rediscovering HOPE.