Ritual Memory

“I love art almost as much as I love books. It’s hard to explain how I feel when I see a beautiful painting. It’s a combination of scared, happy, excited, and sad all at once. Like a soft light that glows in my chest and stomach for a few seconds. Sometimes it takes my breath away.”-Julia Salgado in I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter by Erika Sánchez

In second grade Mamá took me to the Albuquerque Public Schools testing site for my last chance to be deemed “gifted.” My brother Adam, seventeen months younger than me, was estimated gifted by his teachers and proven by the testing site way back when he was in Kindergarten. After my parents saw the enriching learning opportunities afforded my brother because of his gifted status Mamá fought for me to earn the right as well. As an eight-year-old in this second round of testing (feeling the pressure), I did the best I could. After working my way through conceptual puzzles, like using small individual shapes to make a new larger form, working various math and word problems, and drawing pictures as responses to posed questions, Mamá was called into the room as I was excused. She received the news that I wasn’t gifted according to the tests. It was my last chance, because the program ended admittance by the start of one’s third grade year. I’d failed again. Mamá was tasked with telling me I didn’t make the cut as we drove home. “Did I really mess up the tests?” I asked.

“No honey,” she said kindly. “They said you did just fine, it’s just…”

“What is it?” I spurted out quickly with worry heavy in my voice; tears crowding the back of my throat.

Finally she expelled, “The woman giving the test said, you’re not creative enough to be gifted.”

Hands gripping the steering wheel, looking forward, she chose to let me sit with my feelings of disappointment, of failure, of letting down my family, and the new knowledge that I just gained: I am smart, just not creative.

Unlikely moments have a way of holding on to you like a piece of gum stuck to the bottom of your shoe. “You’re not creative enough,” was a juicy glob of bubblegum on the ball of my favorite pair of wedges. It picked up other fragments of substances along the way, that morphed the blob into “I’m not creative.” Enough sounded like there was a possibility to improve, and as a perfectionist in a high-achieving family, who had now failed the test twice, I wanted to drop that caveat too. As a failure, I wanted to go all the way. And so, I internalized that I was not creative, for a very long time.

Not being creative served me fine. I was able to achieve in other ways. Following directions; superb. Reading comprehension and my ability to devour a book; phenomenal. Putting all of my best effort into a project until it’s done; fantastic. But the drawbacks of not being creative crept into all areas of my life, even as I tried my best to keep my disappointment of creativity’s absence at bay. It came up when the art teacher our public school could afford rolled into our classroom every other month as we busily painted upside down, under our desks as third graders pretending we were Michelangelo with a ceiling as a canvas. It scratched me gently each time I turned in an essay I tried my best to craft in a compelling way. It gripped me hard around my wrist when I thought about how to solve math problems differently than Dad, my rocket scientist father, tasked with going over my math with me when I struggled, him yelling at the end of our time together, me crying onto my notebook in our nightly ritual of mutually destructive frustration.

Though I may have thought I was the opposite of creative for a good portion of my life, eventually, if you find the skills to process that which holds you back, you can learn to let the negativity go, or live with your challenges with acceptance. In graduate school, I started attending creative non-fiction writing workshops to develop and hone my craft as a writer. While academic scholarship is not typically written in easy, accessible, or beautiful language, the field of Xicana Studies upholds the Second Wave Feminist slogan, “the personal is political.” And for me, this means finding ways to draw on our life experiences to politicize our experiences as a force for positive social change. I began to ground storytelling methods into my written work as a way to bring creativity into my scholarship. At the same time, my friend Alex and I started a tradition of holding Xicana craft days as a way to encourage self-care, to destress when we felt the weight of dissertation deadlines looming. We painted objects for our home, sculpted clay into useful, yet aesthetically pleasing and culturally relevant things like roses hot glued onto metal thumbtacks to spruce up bulletin boards we framed in fabric. We were inspired by Xicana feminist theory, Xicana literature and the method of rasquachismo –the Mexican, working-class art form of using what you have access to and making something beautiful from it – like how beautiful Dia de Los Muertos altars would be made from items one already has at home, upcycled trash repurposed to honor loved ones long passed, but still very present in our lives. Erika Sánchez’s character in I am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter, Julia Salgado, gets to our cravings, of the desire to see ourselves in the cultural landscape, and the values of elements of art that paint our realities in the space of our home galleries with color and bold demands.

In addition to the deep well of inspiration I draw from Xicana feminist ways of being, I also honor and recognize that my life as a queer femme connects me to queer creative culture – where our very presence in spaces, our relationships, our refusal to conform to gender and sexual norms challenges society to be more inclusive of difference. Our art manifests in how we dress, how we wear our hair, how we perform our gender identities. At the intersections of identities reviled by some, making art becomes one way to seek visibility, recognition, and representation. Our art is a political making – where we envision new futures, change minds, imagine alternative realities, and use visual culture to fuel our radical, decolonial social change revolutions.

Art has always been an important part of my life even as I once thought it was supposed to be kept at a distance, meant only for appreciation or scholarly analysis, only to be made by people who were anointed creative. Today, I see art as another tool in our toolbox to inspire different ways to be in the world. Another format to express myself and the ideas I hold dear, a medium to explore ideas beyond words alone in hopes of making a change. When I decided to enroll in community college art school in 2018, I set a goal to deepen my artistic practice. I believed two years of visual arts coursework could help build my vocabulary and deepen my understandings of why and how other artists approach their work in the ways that they do. I’ve always learned best in community where I know my peers and expectations for our work is clearly communicated. I also learn best when I know where my professors come from, what inspires them, how they sees visual art as an important form of expression. I am motivated by expectations of excellence, with healthy reminders that sometimes our best is not perfection, but best efforts is good enough. After graduating in 2020 I have been living an artist’s life while also continuing to learn in language how to describe the phenomenon of art taking my breath away. I desire in the deepest part of my soul to continue to heal from the burden of negatively believing I was not a creative person for too many years of my life. Above all, I wish to feel confident in being not only a work of art, but an artist with something to say across dimensions, beyond the plane filled only with words.

I share this story with you to continue my healing journey. I pass on affirmations to you that you don’t have to carry the pain of your younger years. You can make something better of it; you can grow with it into new forms. I am someone who will not take the path most traveled. And, oh how delicious it is to find the perfect meeting between the visual and the word. The future belongs to those who continue to work on healing themselves, so as to better love others. I’ve been fighting through a really nasty bout of imposter syndrome, and when that starts to creep in, I think of my younger self and push through for her. Here’s to whatever also helps you push through.

What I’m Reading

When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir by Patrisse Khan-Cullors and Asha Bandele

So often it’s easy to just assume who we are who we are based on the experiences of our lives and yet we also don’t give enough attention to the experiences that shape us. This memoir painstakingly traces the origin of the Black Lives Matter network through Patrisse Khan-Cullors personal experiences with law enforcement and her family’s experiences with the criminal justice system in LA. She links how these systems shape the experience far too many know as one of surveillance and terror, all while she and others committed to Black liberation are labeled as terrorists. Part movement memoir, part personal memoir, Khan-Cullors weaves tragedy and resilience with love and heart. It is a book that will change you, if you let it.

What I’m Watching

Season 10 of Art21 - The award winning PBS series is back with three episodes organized by place, London, Beijing, and the US/Mexico Border. The series is beautifully shot and there is a wide variety of artists who are covered across the three episodes. The artists in each episode ask great questions to reflect upon and at the end of the day what ties them all together is the relationship between what they hope to challenge the viewer to take away from their work. Of course, I’ve been drawn to the “how,” of it all, how do these folks make what they make? How do they translate their experimentation into new work? How does the magic happen?

Creative Ritual

In the last two weeks I have been busy prepping for my show - when the advertisement goes out later this fall I will be sure to share it with you. I completed the fifth painting in my series that will be up next year, as I was painting and stitching I was thinking a lot about the concept of thresholds as powerful spaces - an in-between - with lots to ponder. If you’d like to see the painting I put it up on my website scroll all the way to the bottom to see my newest, very happy, yellow addition to my collection! I’m making really good progress on the sixth painting for my series and if you’re interested in seeing the more frequent updates, please give me a “follow” on my art instagram account if you’re on that platform @ArtofKCF. I launched it last week to experiment with keeping my artist (work) life a little more separated from my home life with Vaimo. We’ll see how the experiment goes. For now, I’m enjoying the cozy audience of patrons, artists, and supporters of my work. 

Questions to Ponder

How are you tending to your inner child?
What are you healing?
How does the magic happen for you?
What takes your breath away (in a good way)?

Thanks for journeying with me. I hope, as always, that you take what you need and leave the rest for someone else, or for another time. 

-KCF