A Fresh Start

When I started this blog two years ago, my intent was to chronicle my art life and the impact mental illness has on it.  The plan was to post daily, a plan which went awry with a hospitalization in May 2010, another in August 2010, and then other interruptions.  I finally gave up posting this past summer while I was in the midst of a depression I didn't recognize.

But it's a new year and I want to once again exercise my mind.  I want to once again communicate to whomever wants to listen.  It is one of the ways I fight through the fog that I often feel as my symptoms try to overtake me.

Part of me wants to look back and reflect of the events of 2011.  The huge, most momentous thing was my move from an apartment haunted by the ghosts of emotional and verbal abuse, an apartment filled with stuff I didn't even need but that I had accumulated over the years as a way of hiding from the world.  I hadn't realized this before.  I hadn't understood that the dark paneled walls and the stacks of stuff was affecting my mental health.  Though the apartment had 4 large rooms, they were much smaller really, because of all the things that were pressing down and occupying space.

Now I live in 2 1/2 rooms on the sixth floor of an apartment building for the elderly and disabled, but there are bright, light walls, large windows that overlook a wide expanse--in a city, but it's a terrific view.  The rooms are open, and I can move around them.  It does wonders.  And I live in a community--I can choose how I interact with people and I can retreat when people get to be too much for me.

There was another hospitalization in September, when I finally realized that I needed help to alleviate my depression.  And a period without health insurance that was scary.  And then the loss of people from my life--deaths and waning relationships.

What may be more important than the move and the hospitalization, though, may be the new relationships I've been building this year, especially with PeaceLove Studios in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, a place where those with mental illness and the wider community can interact and make art together.  (http://www.peacelovestudios.com).

And so here I am.  Finally.

My main goals for this year are to get healthier--physically and mentally, finally establish the online shop I've been promising to do for two years, and to make more art.  I need to make art for my own sanity, and I would like to get into a regular studio routine and experiment more.  I also want to get back into the habit of posting my work for comments.

So that's where I am at on New Year's Day 2012.  It's time to get back to work.

Here's a piece I did complete this year.  Hope you enjoy it.

She Wondered If She'd Brushed Her Teeth