Baby Fawn

An old and cherished postcard from my BFF artist sister Kelly Shaw Willman.

If you had to choose an animal to represent you, which one would you choose? It's a question I sometimes ask people when I am trying to get acquainted with them. Everyone has probably considered this at some point; it's akin to asking "what's your favorite color?" I like this particular question because it requires the use of symbolism in an intricate--- but still intuitive--- way. Finding an answer means thinking in a child-like manner, human yet automatic, intellectual yet unforced. The response is always telling. 

This type of association occurs often in "primitive" cultures (ugh, I dislike that usage) and also in literature or myth. Just think of the totem, the spirit animal, the dæmon, the patronus. The pairing happens instinctively, perhaps functioning as a way to help us understand identity. I think this is what it does for me... although I'm still not really sure. Writing or talking about this sort of thing is difficult; it does not fit well into words. All I know is that the pairing is important and holds a great deal of meaning.  

When I was a Baby Fawn

When I was a little kid, maybe five or six, I used to play a game called "Baby Fawn." It was a very simple game. Mom and my sisters and I always went on a walk in the middle of the day, and sometimes during this "days walk" (as we termed it) I would run ahead and curl up on the pavement, face down, and wait for the rest of my family to catch up. When they came upon me, Mom (as carefully instructed!) would say, "Oh, girls, it's a baby fawn!" And she'd proceed to speak as if they'd just discovered a real little fawn laying in the road. After a couple of minutes, I'd magically turn back into Arhia--- and then run ahead to repeat the game. If Mom got tired of it, she never let on. What a lady! I can distinctly remember transforming into the baby fawn, but I cannot recall why I chose that animal. Maybe because I thought deer were magical in their silent grace... and I enjoyed being such a fresh and untarnished creature. The moment of being "discovered" was always a bit frightening, since I'd convinced myself I was a deer, but it was also fun to be at the center of attention as a beautiful and somewhat mystical beast. 

A Safe Child

When I saw Disney's Bambi for the first time, it affected me quite severely. I definitely sobbed in the darkness of the movie theatre when Bambi's mother died. To me she was Mom. My mom. I experienced a very real existential moment involving the knowledge and understanding of death. I avoided ever seeing that movie again, though I had several opportunities. I didn't let on that it had made such a deep impression on me--- I'd hidden my tears. I felt ashamed, since it was just a silly animated movie after all. I did not want to risk being laughed at as the weepy, emotional, "weak" one compared to Rhiannon's Big Sister strength. 

One of my first experiences of Frida Kahlo was her painting "The Little Deer," or sometimes called "The Wounded Deer." It struck me as outrageously brave; so brazenly forward about an intimate, private sort of pain. The symbolism of it captured me. And her face--- calm in spite of the arrows, like the face of Christ on the cross in some of the Medieval paintings... just looking at you looking at the pain. I loved the honesty of it, and the awkwardness, like how she has two sets of ears. It is all exactly right.  

Frida and Granizo

Audrey and Pippin

In college, I made a painting referencing this one (if only in symbols employed; the content was altogether different). It is a dream I had while studying abroad in London--- an image of love (destiny, adoration) that came to me one night when I was missing Myer like you can't imagine. Oh, and Frida also owned a pet deer, as did Audrey Hepburn. What is it with artistic ladies and fawns? There's something attractive about the delicacy of a deer, and then there are the spots it loses with age and the number of points on a buck's antlers... an animal symbolically loaded.  

Being homeschooled and living a relatively secluded life in the woods meant that my sisters and I inevitably created a unique culture of our own. I have called it a totemic culture; in fact, my MFA thesis was based on this idea. All of us had "spirit animals"--- Rhiannon was a cat and a monkey, Annwn was a frog, etc. We have drawn and painted each other in our various animal incarnations. Here are three of them.

Embroidered fawn from Mirra

Rhiannon's rendition of us

My painting of Annwn

Routine as Ritual

"Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work."--- Chuck Close

"My experience has been that most really serious creative people I know have very, very routine and not particularly glamorous work habits."--- John Adams

Even as a child, I relished my routines--- especially those of the morning. I liked to wake early, when only Mom was up, and do my chores in the stillness and silvery light that comes just before dawn; when the birds are singing loud and the Eastern sky holds all the secrets of the day. I would yank on my sweatpants and gather the tools needed to pump the water and feed the rabbits: blue kettle of boiling water (if the weather was below freezing), ice cream pale of water for priming, and scoops for measuring rabbit chow. The water from our pump was the best-tasting water I've had in my life; you can only imagine water this clear, hard, fresh, cold! The memory brings such a craving--- such a thirst. Dad put our pump in the ground long ago after finding the well, witching-style. 

I fed the rabbits with their alfalfa pellets, but also picked fresh quack grass, still covered in dew, until my hands were cold and green-stained. We raised these animals for food, which made me sad when I thought about it, but didn't stop me from eating rabbit and rice on Saturday nights... so delicious! The rabbit food barrel sat just outside Dad's studio windows, and if he was up early working, I made sure to catch his eye and wave to him. I felt it was a special moment between the two of us.  Routine has a wonderfully stabilizing effect on my life, yet I always feel a bit shame-faced about this fact. I find myself pretending to be much more *spontaneous* than I actually am. Perhaps this comes partially from the way creative people are usually portrayed: as creatures of reckless, messy, brilliant, wild fits of enlightened genius who wend their way through days and nights of ecstatic bliss/anguish. It's only a matter of time, I reason semi-consciously, until I am discovered to be a true stodgy bore--- not an artist at all.I've been reading a book recently called Daily Rituals: How Artists Work by Mason Currey. I checked it out of the library after seeing a set of incredible graphs based on information from this book. Currey's tome is organized into a set of 161 brief yet fascinating accounts of the everyday routines of remarkable people--- from Kafka to Darwin to Picasso to Beethoven. It has been a highly validating read! I find it encouraging to see the wide variety of ways in which these well-known creatives spent their days, and the quaint, strange, and bizarre habits they engaged in (equal in peculiarity to some of my own). I love that Curry used the word Ritual in his title rather than routine. I've always felt that these humble repetitions hold a sort of sanctity, and myself prefer to use the former word. Inspired by the graphs on infowetrust.com, I decided to make one of my own. I must admit that exposing my routines this way causes me to feel anxious; however, I found it so interesting to pour over the day-by-day of artists in Currey's book that my geeky obsession overcame the anxiety. Maybe you will find my graph interesting--- or possibly entertaining--- in a similar fashion. Here it is:

This is an example of an IDEAL day, let me stress. Oftentimes I can be found running errands, doing extra kitchen work, grocery shopping (Fridays), writing letters, attending appointments, or visiting a friend during the times I have outlined here for art. In a perfect world, every weekday would adhere strictly to the above. Upon even closer inspection, my schedule is filled with many small yet essential rituals involving every aspect of life. For example, I engage in an elaborate bathing procedure replete with incense, candles, and scented oils, and there's no such thing as "not enough time" wherein The Bath is concerned. If I were not able to partake of this indulgent ablution, the rest of my day would be unthinkable. Similarly, I require a lot of time for eating, and I eat the same things almost every day. Dinner: fish, chicken bones, pickled beets with orangepeel, seaweed and greens with seeds and miso, turmeric dressing, and olive oil.I MUST eat this dinner on the same plate, with the same chopsticks, while listening to an audiobook... or I swear the earth would wobble on its axis and fly out of orbit.  If you have seen any of my artwork, you will recognize within it this same relentless, obsessive aspect of my personality. My drawings and paintings are as much a part of this intricate daily ritual as the eating, the bathing, the walking. I don't think I could make art if I was not able to eat, bathe, and walk in these ways... I am painting when I am not painting. You might say I'm a bit of a Sheldon Cooper... or rather more than a bit. Like, on a Sheldon-scale of 1 to 10, I'm probably Sheldon-8. And in case you needed further convincing, here's a photo-realistic drawing I did of Jar Jar Binks when I was a teenager. Enjoy.