Reflecting on James Baldwin’s “The Creative Process” and My Own

At 20 years old, I wrote my first poem and rediscovered the blissfully frightening feeling of starting something new that I knew nothing about. I write about love and music and not much else, but somehow these subjects reveal so much about myself to me. The closing line of a poem ties up loose ends; it gives me the closure others could not. The nuances of a comma or an indentation make all the difference, placing space to reflect at the precise moments and demanding attention at others.

But no one has read my poems.

Three years of art school have led me to wrestle with the question of whether art really does anything. What if I say something important, but no one sees it? Nothing changes? I post pictures of my artwork on Instagram, but I do not have a lot of followers, so what is the purpose? These questions always bring me back to my simple love for making things. That is, after all, why I went to art school. Anything I have ever made fulfilled a need that I felt, and I share it online so that a corner of the Internet may engage with it and maybe find something they need. I make art for myself but believe others may benefit from viewing or engaging with my self-exploration, the pursuit of my “aloneness” and my “attempt to make vivid” my experience, as James Baldwin so accurately puts it. The decision to share my art with others inherently connects it to society, even if I made it for myself. One might say my artwork comes from a selfish place, or maybe the more forgiving word is empathetic.

Much of my work engages with urban design, policy, and theory. When I question the national and governmentally subsidized preference for suburbia over cities, it is rooted in my own deep sadness over the environmental crisis and over a manipulated consciousness which tells us we should isolate ourselves in communities of only people like ourselves. Questions I have directed toward society rarely make themselves explicit in my work. I cite them as influences for my aesthetic choices so that someone may step up to one of my paintings and admire it for its beauty, its craftsmanship. Maybe I just want people to have a deeper appreciation for the handmade so that they may value other people a bit more. Or maybe I just like making things.

Maybe my “lover’s war” (Baldwin) is with art itself- the idea that art must serve some grand purpose besides existing. Though I understand and admire those whose work picks at art institutions and markets, I find myself exhausted by the idea of making work that aims to do that. I find it exhausting to make work that is not authentic to me; though, I also recognize the naivety of putting out work thinking it will not end up part of the flawed markets and institutions others criticize. I just don’t feel that that’s my job. That’s not my niche. I can’t say I’ve found mine yet, but I know I love making things, and in doing so will my purpose find me.

Baldwin’s statement that “the truth about us is always at variance with what we wish to be” resonates with me completely. My artwork has been an ongoing process of reconciling what I feel versus who I want to be- someone who is unaffected when others hurt her, who is strong and secure. I’ve helped myself through writing and making art, and maybe I can help someone else when I make the decision to put my work out into the world. I am affected by the same circumstances as those sharing this planet with me at this moment in time, so my self-exploration must be relevant to others. In self-portraits I have made over the past few years, I have endeavored to portray my likeness as is, not in some flattering angle that makes me look smaller. In poems I have just started to write, I argue with my instincts to take everything out on my body and the shame of feeling like I am a work in progress.

I think it is time to start sharing my poems.