By SARAH LOOMIS, visual artist, CIIS student, and CIIS staff member
This post was written as an assignment for professor Cindy Shearer’s Aesthetics of Value course. In Aesthetics of Value, students explore their arts heritage and inquire into the values that guide their creative work.
In Cindy Shearer’s "Aesthetics of Value" course, my classmates and I explored our personal artist lineage as a method of deeper inquiry into our aesthetic choices as artists and writers. As I’ve delved into my past, I’ve gained insight into the larger impact of my childhood and family life, and I can now see many profound ways in which my current body of work was shaped by my upbringing.
For instance, I'm discovering how scale and size, drawing style, subject matter, and material choices are not just something I am drawn to, but rather, have a specific source. Having experienced trauma and abuse in my family, I’ve struggled with vulnerability and being "seen" throughout my life. I’ve often been drawn to the small and hidden. I am aware that wounds both seen and unseen can become ingrained parts of all of us, and I understand how this has surfaced in my aesthetic choices.
My art focuses on my personal history, how my story may relate to humanity as a whole. Through the metaphor of trees and the body, I explore concepts of wounds and healing; I investigate notions of absence and presence that exist between loss and recovery, destruction and preservation in varying degrees.
My work examines the vulnerability and complexity of emotions and the human experience. Working on a very small scale and with delicate pieces, I often make use of found, used, and discarded materials, such as wood, photos, or bottles.. By using materials that already have a past and their own stories, I engage in a healing process by taking these objects and interweaving new life and beauty into something that was once thrown away or considered useless.
“if only it were that easy” by Sarah Loomis
One of my greatest insights from Shearer's course is that, in my personal process of healing from my past wounds, my art has changed and transformed into a clearer and stronger body of work since I initially began several years ago. The transformative process within is changing the art, and, more importantly, the practice of making art is becoming the transformative tool for personal growth, like a symbiotic relationship giving to each other over and over.
The process of knowing myself more substantially has led to a more meaningful artistic inquiry. For years, I’ve been aware of my reasons why I make the work I do. As a serious artist, this is critical in developing a concise, meaningful body of work. However, what has changed for me is that I’ve realized, since first making this body of work, that I’ve changed significantly in positive ways. My past few years have become about me shedding my past, identifying ways that I limit or hinder myself due to wounds as a child, and ultimately, fully realizing myself as an artist. As a result, my propensity to be small, hidden, and safe is no longer as relevant for me. In these exercises overall, I’ve discovered that striving for perfection in myself is just an illusion that keeps me small, and that the real perfection and beauty is in the imperfect. I’ve learned that there is immense strength in self-acceptance, vulnerability, and revealing my personal story in my work, and ultimately I am more engaged and alive in my creative process because of it.