The Blind Man Society

There is great healing in the art making journey. The goal isn’t merely the finished piece, but the vibrant, colorful journey itself. Hello! This is blow torch lady, former art teacher, present barista, mental health counseling student … but most importantly the torch holder. I wanted to talk about some ideologies that guided who I was for my students and who I am as a person. I invite you get out explore your mind, grab a cup of coffee, find beauty in the broken and trust the process.

Art has always been my source of intrinsic peace, especially when tasked with broken pieces. Broken pieces I successfully made sense of with nothing but the innate ability to create something uniquely valuable to the world- something I truly believe we were born with. I soaked my lesson plans in this principle. Marinated it till the students can feel the after taste for years to come. Every world view, good & bad experiences, thoughts, ideas, family, trauma, love, and hate contribute to the artistry of life. There is beauty in the broken. The beauty is in the fragments of a broken home, heart, or mind being pieced together to form something larger than the physical world; larger than your anxieties, stressors or depressors – a mental place only “trusting the process” can help you reach.

I found beauty in my classroom as I witnessed this belief come to life through my student’s artworks.

One of our first activities was the “upside-down horse.” A challenging exercise I encourage all to try if you already find yourself resisting the constraints of conventional thinking. The process of slowly revealing the horse piece by piece and drawing only what they actually see – not what they imagine- redirects their focus on the present and encourages them to trust in the process. There was something electric that would surge through the air as even the unsure and inexperienced lifted their paper to reveal the final product. Slowly lines and shapes turn into hooves to a heel, to a knee, forearm, flank, shoulder and a muzzle till tadaaa a horse! No, nay, not just a horse but a testament to trusting in the journey.

Our last project involved my favorite form of creativity, transforming beauty in the broken and discarded. My students were to repurpose old cardboard to recreate famous artworks- giving new life to the old and forgotten. From Magritte to Vermeer, my students pieced together thrown out cardboard to construct timeless pieces. We quickly found out that the thinner cardboards were best when they were crumbled, ripped, squished and soaked wet to recreate tree bushes, fabric details, and clouds. Thicker cardboard was best for the sturdy background but also when torn apart to get to the inner zig zagged lining inside to recreate curtains and waves. There is beauty in the broken. I would like to think this process taught them to see value in places where others may overlook or deem useless. I hope they found hope in the imperfect, broken and forgotten.

I challenge you to find something beautiful in the messy, muddled, and confusing parts of your own journey. In my experience, beauty in the broken was found through resilience, reinvention, exploring, and reflecting through my own life experiences. It was through this that gave me clarity to envision a unique perspective of the vibrancy of life. A perspective I am honored to share with you all. I hope you trust your process and continue creating yourself into a unique, irreplaceable, ever-evolving work of art.