Art's Sake

We have to write essays soon. Last year, coming up with ideas for the graduated seniors was so easy, yet when it comes to myself, I trip over every other word. For the common application, I want to talk about running in 87 degrees that feels like 95 degrees in 70% humidity. I want to talk about how I can feel rays of cancer searing into my slippery skin. Its so easy to describe the literal ruggedness of Pioneer's broken forest, where the remains of the bull-dozed trees are crumpled in ugly juxtaposition with the ever-running river. There isn't a day when I don't remember the times when I run so fast that my face hits the gnats before than gnats can fly into me, and there isn't a moment when I won't forget they day's I'd have to walk, forcing my legs to throw themselves forward, exhausted, fatiqued, waiting for me to go pee.

But my mom wants me to write about drawing. Man, I love drawing. This whole week, I've felt like crap, full of turds, spouting nonsense, but in the midst of my dad's conservative air conditioning, I could find the last remains of my patience to draw. I mean, if you count that city scape as drawing. Its really more like using my ID card as a ruler and wedging my pen against it a hundred times over. I loved drawing those eggs and figuring out which expressions worked best to what scale. 

I don't know how to talk about it though. In this modern era of art for art's sake, art seems so existentially fraught (yeah, Augustus Waters and basketball hoops used this phrase first, forgive me please). I don't throw away too many drawings anymore, but I also don't archive much of anything. AGhh I already ran out of things to say. Here's what I wrote in my scholarship essay. The question was "What career goals do you have? Why do you want to pursue this career? Have you been involved in activities or certain academic classes that have guided you in this field?"

I want to create for other people, and the most realistic and personal application for this goal is to pursue graphic, architectural, or industrial design. When I first complied to the rules and regulations of the AP Studio Art drawing portfolio, I was young and overenthusiastic, eager to crank twenty four stunning pieces of artwork in 30 weeks. It took me but a fraction of those weeks to realize that I did not possess the detailing and adventurous passion to sculpt deep and lifelike motifs into the heart of the canvas, especially not 24 times in a row. I had no reason to do so, because my love for aesthetic qualities of space and time stems not from a desire to score a 5 on the final College Board portfolio or to feel a sense of capability and self-worth. I never wanted to work for my own benefit, to create a piece just to prove to myself that I held mastery over oils and graphite alike.

I need to create for other people. I felt the artist's equivalent of a rush of adrenaline when I drew a portrait for my badminton coach and painted thank you landscapes for my teachers. I was content to spend my entire spring break designing my badminton club team's tshirts and posters, to be full immersed in every pixel I could alter on Photoshop. While I would love to win a Threadless or shirt.woot contest and bring home thousands of dollars and shining new barbeque grills, I participate in these contests because I love to collaborate with my friend who had shown me these projects in the first place. It was the necessity inherent to the nature of these contests (and my own failing creativity) that brought two friends very close together in the least romantic way possible. I would love to continue to create for other people, to make  something that is not only beautiful but also useful to them.