Its All a Risk

My life has been defined by an innate tendency to take risks. As a child I was known for asking too many questions, touching things that weren’t meant to be touched, or taking things apart just to see how they worked. This air of inquisitive defiance was coupled with a natural creativity and I spent much of my time as a kid creating art, writing plays and poems, and building things. I grew up with my mother and sisters in the San Fernando Valley and the story of our struggle to survive is likened to that of many single-parent, working class families striving for their version of an American Dream. My dream always included art and creative writing and I was even able to envision myself as an art student, building a powerful career that would propel me out of financial instability and into the vast diversity of art, culture, and travel.

As I entered adolescence, the combination of my already over developed sense of antagonism and a series of personally traumatic experiences led to my decision to leave high school at age fifteen. In a time of crisis, I felt utterly rejected and misunderstood by the institution. Teachers often interpreted my constructive resistance as arbitrary adolescent angst and my boredom as indifference and eventually I opted to take the California High School Proficiency Exam and attend Los Angeles Valley College. Leaving high school was the first major risk I took, one which would prove to shape my life in more ways than I anticipated. As a young person, still in my teens, I worked fulltime and attempted to complete college courses. Throughout my adolescence and into my early adulthood, the dream of going to art school became harder and harder to envision as I was confronted with my family’s growing financial hardship and my increased responsibility as the oldest of three girls. Leaving high school at fifteen ultimately pushed me completely into the workforce, making school less and less a priority and art thrust even further into the periphery of my self image.

In my early twenties, my severe but unrefined sense of justice and intellectual pursuit struggled to fit neatly into the context of public higher education. I attempted many semesters at four different community colleges. I travelled between majors in Latin American history, cultural anthropology, philosophy, and art history. I battled to find myself. At Glendale Community College I had the privilege of meeting a few zealous professors and earth-shattering books that exposed the world of counter-cultural art history and grassroots social movements – and it was impossible to remain contained in the classroom! Suddenly my personal struggle to recognize my own worth, heal from the residual emotional effects of past traumas and dropping out of high school could be clearly connected to the macro experiences of human beings whom contend with the manifestations of oppression on a daily basis. I was inspired by the “everyday people” that chose to devote their lives to the incredible possibility that a world free from all forms of oppression could exist. I became impassioned by the connection I witnessed between the drawings and paintings I had created since childhood and the ways in which my art could contribute to community change.

The leaps I made during my time at Glendale Community College led me to the second major risk I took. I followed my intuition and jumped head first into the world of grass roots community organizing. I always hoped that my instinctual creativity, defiance, and abstract thought processes would prove to serve me in some way and in the context of social justice work I was able to find a home for the identity I created as an activist and artist. I became deeply involved with the anti-war movement and racial justice work. I journeyed through literature about social movements and built a strong analysis. Within social justice movement circles, I found a sense of belonging and community.

After gathering a lot of experience in the arts and youth development and I was able to obtain positions within in several non-profit organizations. My difficult experiences as a young person helped me to build powerful relationships with youth and those qualities that once defined me simply as a “pain in the ass” or a “high school drop-out” proved not only to serve me but to cultivate a creative ambition. I was driven to serve the human community and these qualities granted me the ability to create works of art that offer a unique voice to the creation of transformative culture and a critical analysis of the complexity of the human experience. I still imagined myself continuing my education, and even attempted to complete general education classes at community colleges, but the need to work fulltime and my commitments to community work stood between me and my degree for many years.

At twenty-seven —twelve years after dropping out of high school, after nearly ten years working with youth, and over five years invested in community work— I was laid off from a position as the director of after school programs at a high school in Lincoln Heights. The loss of this job came as a major shock and forced me to reevaluate the direction in which my life was heading. The foundation for a career I thought I had created suddenly crumbled. Given the recession and cutbacks on public programs, the current job market proved to be difficult to navigate and I found it impossible to compete without any formal education, despite my many years of experience. However, greater than this reality was the truth that I had, for many years ignored my own artistic practice, neglecting to invest in my own vision and skill as an artist. I had spent many years creating artistic spaces for young people, developing creative approaches to consciousness raising, and supporting the work of important social justice organizations. However, I failed to nurture my own process nor create sustainability that would support my own creativity. It became very clear to me that this moment of hardship was actually an opportunity to reclaim my education and artistic goals, and return to those dreams I held onto as a child. The scope of my life collapsed into one single choice: be an artist or nothing at all.

For the year following the loss of my job, I allowed myself to test the possibility that I could create a life built on my art. I co-founded an art collective called Studio Cuarenta y Tres and we immediately began organizing group art exhibitions and workshops. We built a deep relationship as artists and allies in the struggle to sustain ourselves through our artistic practice. I began to treat my art as a fulltime job and for me, the creation of art was no longer a peripheral hobby but the very means for my survival: it paid the rent, nurtured my soul, and framed some of the most important relationships I will ever have. Risk, as it had become a theme in my life, transformed into a deep faith that rested on the notion that if I give thanks for what I have, treat people with kindness, work very hard, and maintain a hawk eye’s vision on the possibility that the world we share can be a safe, healthy place for all human beings—abundance and opportunity will reveal itself to me. The challenges I faced as a young person and throughout my early adulthood transformed into profound lessons. Painful memories that once stood as stone markers of failure, regret, or trauma, revealed their potential as teachers— unearthing the human capacity to transform.

This narrative leads me into an honest declaration of the most important risk I have taken in my adult life—applying for this under graduate program at Art Center. The last year of intense struggle has located my artistic practice in a position of transition, presenting an opportunity to authentically commit to my work. The process of preparing my application and portfolio and offering it to you manifests as a risk to me because with my work also travels my history, my spirit, and my intention—offerings which require vulnerability, courage, and an admission of my ability to sacrifice. As my life experience has lead me to this moment, it has also revealed what is at stake when human beings began asking why they are here and what is the process of creation really worth in the context of our conflicted world.

Ultimately, I can think of nothing else worth the work, vulnerability, and sacrifice as my art; not because I desire the notoriety, public validation, or money; not even because I desire the sense of gratification upon completing a piece. But because for me, the act of creation is the only action profound and powerful enough to challenge the overwhelming presence of destruction that our planet and the human community faces— through its wars, violence, poverty, and denigration of the earth. I have a deep intuition that my work is connected to a human journey toward justice, peace, and healing and I believe that I possess the kind of creative vision and artistic skill that can bridge communities.

Taking this risk holds the tenuous possibility that I might finally obtain the time and space to invest in what I know will be a lifelong artistic process and I sit with the truth of what is at stake for me everyday. I feel confident in the belief that as I take the risk in applying for this program, the risk you take in accepting me is also an investment in an entire community of artists who struggle everyday to vision a radically transformed world, despite a lack of resources and access to space; artists whom view their work as an vehicles of change, driven by vision, and the audacity of imagination that is inherently required to shift culture. For me and this beautiful community I am blessed to be a part of—anything worth loving, anything worth working for, anything worth struggle—inherently requires a severe risk and a brave ascension into an authentic experience of being human.