Another Year...

So today is my birthday. It's funny to look back over this past year. My last birthday was spent packing up and readying myself to leave. This birthday is a home-coming of sorts. I'm back in New York now, making work and loving it.

This past year has been really challenging and very rewarding for me. I spent the year in Asheville and am only now just returning to my life back in New York. Everything still seems so foreign and alien to me. The familiar foot-paths are still not yet what they used to be. Each day I quietly hope that I will fall back into place, but the truth of the matter is that I've changed and can't so easily just be who I was.

I think the biggest thing for me is that I've had a lot of time to forgive myself. That must sound crazy. Why would anyone have to forgive themself? But I think that ultimately I blamed myself and held myself responsible for things that were completely out of my control. That blame was a poison that made it hard for me to enjoy life. It was a bitter that underscored even the sweetest of moments.

I also came to the realization that my artwork is essential to my sanity. It must seem so self-centered to non-artists. But my work I think gives me sanity and that through my growth as a person, my art has always provided the solution and answer to the problems. To look back over the work I've made over the last year, I see that I hid in it. That I created with my many many many collages, a camuflouge that I psychologically and emotionally escaped behind. I resorted to the mechanical and methodical and obsessive cutting and pasting of paper to heal spiritually. It was my mantra.

So here is another year past, with high hopes of much to come.