Work in Progress

Thanks to a friend, who challenged me to use my talents, I am working on a portrait for Face.Africa. Above are a few of my interpretations of Stacy a young orphan girl from Kenya. What a lofty idea...that I (a girl from Missouri) am going to creat an image of Stacy from a simple photo. This image, that she will eventually receive as her own, will first be her face here in the United States as this project grows/tours to educate and inspire American thoughts towards Africa. My work is to give a face to an orphan millions of miles away. I can't and won't do it justice, but will try my hardest.

As I have taken on this challenge I have realized a lot about myself and how I, too, am a work in progress. My insecurities are what would of held me back from taking on this task without the prompting of a friend. My fear that I am not good enough, not talented enough, not creative enough. Fears that others would be better, that I'm not an artist, that I haven't been trained. It's all nonsense, I know...but real. I was thinking yesterday about all the things that I want to do, all my lofty ideas and wondered what was holding me back. It boiled down to one main thing...fear of criticism/rejection/failure.

Today as I worked on my project at Broadway Cafe I was approached by my new friend Bill, a partially toothed man in threadbare, tattered clothes. He said to me "are you an artist?" I hestitated and responded with some sort of "I'm a nurse by profession, but enjoy art." Unable to claim myself as an artist for fear that I didn't live up to the name, I asked Bill if he did art. He responded proudly, "I am an artist." Claiming boldly the name that I hestitated to place on myself out of insecurity, was the man with nothing earthly to show for it. The irony struck me hard.

The whole of this reminded of a passage I read yesterday while relaxing with my new friend Anne Lamott and her book Traveling Mercies (see my last blog for the links) her raw honesty sums it up well:

We totally bombed. No wait, this is not actually the truth: I bombed. Grace was fine. Everyone agreed later that Grace was fine...If you are what you do - and I think my parents may have accidentally given me this idea - and you do poorly, what then? It's over; you're wiped out. All those prophecies you heard in the dark have come true, and people can see the real you, see what a schmendrick you are, what a fraud. Alone in my hotel room later that night, I felt stricken and lurky and dark...Out of nowhere I remembered something one of my priest friends had said once, that grace is having a commitment to - or at least an acceptance of - being ineffective and foolish. That our bottled charm is the main roadblock to drinking that clear cool glass of love.

Ahhh! So let the work continue...I AM an artist...drink up!