I always come back to making jewelry. I don't know if it's a blessing or a curse, but even in my current 'the world is ending and totally devoid of meaning, why am I even wasting everybody's perfectly good oxygen' state of mind, I am still surprisingly good at it. (Which sort of weirds me out. There's some part of me that feels very much like a whore on this front, in the literal way of 'I am prostituting a part of myself in a mutually exploitative way that is really not OK'.)
I kept saying for ages that I started with that when I was about 12, but recently was reminded I have been doing that since I was 8. (...and I had previously apparently sold little hand-woven coasters made on a table loom when I was four. Four. 4. I don't even remember this, and probably just wondered at the time where all those dollhouse carpets I wove for my Barbies went. And my family wonders why I keep defending this hobby as the one creative thing in my life that I steadfastly refuse to even consider trying to find a way to even try to monetize... )
I've come and gone with it since then. I am now 43. I tend to be so hyper-productive with it that even if I quit for two years or so, there was plenty left to sell in the interim.
I collect odd skills. This is relevant. I learned to weave on a four-harness loom by the time I was four, ffs. (This is simply non-normal, people. 
) Pretty much every skill I have demonstrated even the most pathetic proficiency with, my family has pressured me to monetize. I have, as a result, had some pretty weird jobs.
I have:
- made jewelry•
- dyed yarn
- made little woven coasters
- made skins and other textures for Poser• (no really, one of my skins is on the box for Poser Pro 2010)
- made designer doll clothes for a living•
- made theater costumes
- worked as a performer at the ren faire
- designed and made formalwear
- embroidered•
- designed web sites
- designed graphics
I went to college for fashion design, theater costume design, and illustration at various schools over time. I do not have a degree. I shamelessly squandered what money my parents were willing to spend on an education not to get a piece of paper that said I knew my shit, but to go to a new place, learn all the things I wanted to learn that they were willing to teach, and fuck off to the next place to repeat the process, which is really not smart? But in the fields I thrive in, it isn't the paper that proves a damned thing, it's a portfolio. (This is why I've somehow managed to end up forced to take Art History no less than four times. If I see another photo of the Hagia Sophia or the Venus of Willendorf, I take no responsibility for the murder spree that will ensue.)
Things marked with an • are things I've won awards for and in some cases had the work published, sometimes within the first year -- and in the case of the embroidery, the first actual time -- I'd done the thing. (Which you'd really think would give a girl even a jot of self-esteem, but no. )
Though there's a story worth telling here, in spite of the general downer streak I'm on, and it's a good one, I promise. It is the best advice I ever got, and while I didn't follow it forever, I did listen, and I did take it genuinely to heart in spirit, if not specifics, and I have found, over time, that it makes a difference in a way that I cannot quantify, but that has made a substantial difference in the real quality of my life.
When I was a kid, I made clothes for my dolls. It's the main reason, other than a phobia re: moray eels, I didn't just go off and become a marine biologist like I wanted to when I was tiny. It's more or less why I went into design. Whenever I was sick, feeling like crap, or otherwise useless re: actual productivity (which as noted has been demanded since I was 8, ffs) I would make doll clothes.
At the last college I bothered with -- a new school, local, first year it was open, studying commercial illustration -- we had a fantastic teacher. No, really, this man is one of my idols. He is, in a word, an amazing human being and I admire not just his work, but him. (And no, not just because he had the prettiest green eyes any of us college-age girls had ever seen, ahem. Didn't hurt, though?) Because it had been drilled into me since forever, and probably because I was about 5-6 years older than most of the other students who were fresh out of high school, my standards for my own work were much, much higher. I am not trying to talk myself up here; this was actually something pretty painful to me, because I am someone who really wants people to embrace their creativity, do the best they can, and express themselves and feel good doing so. I'd put something up on the crit wall, and see people take their pieces down rather than be compared (and frankly my shit for that class was not super good since we had so little time from week to week to complete a thing) -- and instead of being an ego boost, it was crushing. It hurt. It made me sad, and feel horribly guilty. Needless to say, much as I loved that teacher -- and why will be clear in a moment -- I hated that he used me as a yardstick to point out to others that just grinding something out was not how someone made art, even commercial illustration. I don't particularly give a shit that that's true, I just hated being the example. Talk about awkward and uncomfortable!
I got a concussion during our '3D illustration' project period. I was out for three weeks. I could come up with nothing that was worth doing, nothing I had done, when it came time for end of year portfolio review to take up that slot. All I had was this crappy doll dress I'd made while sick, because I was simply incapable of anything else.
I was so embarrassed when I took this silly doll in a simple little 1930s dress out of the portfolio. I was expecting my teacher to laugh. I was expecting the 'are you fucking kidding me?' look.
It wasn't what I got.
He looked at me calmly, and when I handed him this silly doll, he smiled. (Did I mention the eyes? Yeah, the smile was even better.)
He tells me, "You're my best illustration student this year. Including Pratt. (Which we were not.) But you should be doing this."
And he handed me back the doll.
I just squinted a little, and shook my head, and I couldn't help but ask: "...why?"
He said the one thing that is probably the most educational and human thing I ever learned in college:
"This is the only thing you have ever handed me, smiling."
...and he's right. It matters.
