Day 20 and things got WEIRD today. Seriously, really weird. I did a lot of writhing in front of my camera for today’s video to see how much I could get my skin to move over my bones. I also edited what felt like 92,512 hands onto my body. In reality it was only 40.

At the center of all the weirdness is a desire to create something personal, unique, and telling of the human psyche. As I was brainstorming for ideas today, I kept coming back to these themes:

Entrapment
Parts of Whole
Multitudes

Why? I asked myself what about them made me come back again and again. I believe that analyzing our thoughts leads to important art, so I try to ask myself why all the time. I had a vision of this image, a person made up of hands – holding her together? Tearing her apart? Trapping her? Releasing her? I didn’t care much about pinning down the final meaning, as long as it contained all of those meanings in the final image. I try not to answer questions such as those very closely. I don’t want to know, because I selfishly want to be both author and reader, onlooker and creator. I want to experience my own images the way someone else would; not just personally, but from the air, a hundred feet away.

At the end of the day, almost every image I create has great meaning to me. But, I’m not in this art game just for myself. I desire to speak for those who feel they don’t have a voice, to empower those who choose not to speak yet, and to relate to people no matter how distant or different. I am an introvert, ridden with anxiety and fairly anti-social. Art is my way of connecting. It is my way of skipping the cheap talk to get to what matters most; to have conversations with people that mean something. To look back and know that I spent my time trying. Not necessarily succeeding, but who cares about that, anyway?

My life will not be defined by if I succeeded, but by if I tried. This is me trying, reaching out to you and showing you who I am; not that superficial person that you might bump into on the street, who says “how are you” but really wants to ask “what is your passion?”, but the one who dives straight into those questions without worry.

Are you trapped?
Are you being torn apart?
Are you being held together?

Those are the questions I desire to know answers to, so this is my art, asking those questions.