Am I an Artist?

I’ve always felt unsettled, uneasy, burdened, around those questions since very early on and since then I still ask: how can I make things without giving the ‘making’ I do, or myself, a specific title? Who is the authority of giving someone a title? And how come ‘they’ have it?

And here I am telling you about a seemingly insignificant event that shaped the way I ‘call’ myself, or avoid calling myself, throughout the years. And since I’ve been teaching, I drag with me those who come to be with me in those communal ‘making’ spaces.

I was a preteen.

Until then, as many children, I found simple remedies to my unexplained emotional aches and sorrows in simple ruled pieces of paper taken from a notebook, and humble elementary school pencils. Comfort was often found through those mundane and seemingly dull items.

All easily available everywhere. They were even found at my Romanian speaking aunt Paula and uncle Paul’s mothball-treated house. Along with a milk chocolate bar and warm milk I was all set, for anxiety free afternoons. Plucked out of realities. No common language to share.

Growing up, not much attention was paid to me by adults and peers alike. I grew physically with people, utterly on my own. It suited me very well. I believe I felt it was easier that way, and perhaps it was a way to cope with silences and absences I couldn’t make sense of.

What helped that false sense of ease was the fact that I wasn’t particularly noticed, particularly pretty, particularly intelligent, particularly vocal, particularly successful in school, nor particularly visible. I could go through my days as if I wasn’t a person made of flesh & bones.

Everything changed when a new classmate arrived from the US. She could only speak English at that time. Naturally we were drawn to one another. I remember, her name was Donna. She brought with her something from ‘America’, something I’ve never seen before in my entire life.

It was a box of fine-line color markers. Perhaps from Crayola. Something I didn’t know existed. Not 6 or a dozen, but 24, 36, or 60, or perhaps even 120. I don’t remember but there were a LOT. Breathtaking. And what was more breathtaking was that only I was allowed to use them.

It was absolutely intoxicating to hold one at a time, between eager fingers, test each color, listen to the sound of the marker tips when gliding over the paper, and smell the sweet chemical undertones evaporating when moved passionately on the thin paper, under the nose.

And all of a sudden I was noticed by class mates.

All of a sudden I was witnessed

All of a sudden I was looked at

All of a sudden I was observed closely

All of a sudden I was talked to

All of a sudden I was pretty

All of a sudden I was smart

All of a sudden I was special

All of a sudden I was talented

All of a sudden I was visible

All of a sudden I was worthy of attention

All of a sudden I was a maker of pretty things

All of a sudden I became significant

All of a sudden I became someone worthy of knowing.

All of a sudden I was called an Artist

And what I made, Art.

And till today I ask:

Was it a curse or a gift?

Those shiny, sparkly, impressive color markers from ‘America’?

Did they make me worth loving?

And till today that is one question we ask when we get together, in so many ways, direct or hidden, more achy, more saddening, than happy making.

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