Why do I want to study art?

When I was younger, I never considered myself an artist. I didn't draw or paint or sculpt.  That's what makes an artist right?  I felt like being called an artist puts a person in some sort of elite group that I didn't belong to.  After a long time though I realized that a lot of what I love to do is art, even though almost none of it had anything to do with drawing, painting, or sculpting.  Here is a brief history of my artistic endeavors.

When I was in high school I had a big stack of magazines that I had inherited from my older sister when she moved out of the house.  I slowly turned that stack into collage after collage until my entire room, every spot on the walls and ceiling, became one huge collage.  Me, scissors, paper and a glue stick.  Also during high school I had a few pen pals and I loved to decorate my envelopes before sending the letters to my friends.  In fact, even though I wasn't drawing landscapes or portraits, one could consider my envelope masterpieces to be "drawing".  I even used a ruler some of the time!  Some people seemed to think that I put more energy into the envelope than on the actual letter, but, hey, what's wrong with that?

I love homemade things.  I found instructions for paper making in a zine one day and my curiosity was piqued.  I wondered if I could actually do that.  As an adult, I delved into cheap hobbies like that.  I used recycled materials that I just happened to have in abundance in my small rented house.  My best friend and I made many, many candles from melted candle scraps. One day I was gifted the Reader's Digest Book of Crafts and Hobbies.  It was my go-to source for entertainment since I was pretty much poor.  I often just read it over and over, learning about mosaics, batik, basket weaving, pottery, sewing, and book binding.  The book binding was most interesting to me, and I began making piles of little journals.  I also found a recipe for  homemade soap and went crazy with that.  Everybody got soap and journals for Christmas that year.

Next came my obsession with making bulletin boards out of used wine corks.  Did you know that you can go into nearly any restaurant in town and ask them to save their wine corks for you and they'll do it?  Total score!  Free art supplies!  After that I took note of brick patterns on buildings and pavements everywhere so that I could copy some and use some for inspiration on my cork boards.

This is the only cork board I still have, since I usually give away everything I make.  I just happen to have given this one to my partner :).

I started to collect any books on arts and crafts that I found interesting that I could find at Goodwill.  Unbeknownst to myself I was beginning to amass quite a library of resources.  For some reason there was quite an abundance of books on macramé at Goodwill at that time, and I noticed that a lot of people were wearing hemp necklaces, so I dived into the pool of macramé, and made necklace after necklace, and when I inherited a box of embroidery floss from my ex-boyfriend's grandma, I began knotting up a pile of friendship bracelets.  I had visions of going to festivals and selling them and never having a "real job" again.  I was so silly.

Ten years later, I still have quite a few of these left.  You can get a sense of my color  pattern experimentation of that time.

Hemp chokers.  All the same, but all different.

More hemp necklaces.

Next on my list was painting found wooden objects.  I painted any wooden bowls, candle holders, salt & pepper shakers, or any other functional objects I could find at Goodwill.  You may have noticed that I tend to do everything in multiples.  Here are a few samples of my only painting experience thus far:

Inside.

Outside.

My next endeavor was to make envelopes out of pages from magazines, books, atlases, etc. I guess I kind of have a thing for the US Postal Service.  I was simultaneously crafting greeting cards out of similar materials in addition to scrapbooking supplies, canceled stamps, etc., and while I was at it I delved into Altered Booking as well.  A friend of mine showed me how to make a different kind of journal using the stab-binding method, and so my love for bookbinding was renewed and I stitched together book after book once again.  

Envelopes make a comeback!  You can see on the eagle envelope on the right where I put some 2-sided tape  for sealing it once it's stuffed.  

One day, about 8 years ago now (really?!), my friend's mom came to visit and was carrying her crochet project with her everywhere we went.  I mentioned that I had always wanted to know how to knit and crochet and she didn't hesitate one minute to give me a hook and a skein of purple wool yarn and teach me how to make a chain stitch, single crochet and double crochet.  I have not put my hook down since that day!  Comme d'habitude, I have given away most of the things I have crocheted over the years which include, hats of all sizes, dress-up crowns, purses and other bags, scarves, dishcloths, balls, beanbags, dolls, baby blankets, and a whole set of fruits and vegetables that I gave to my children last Christmas.  I have also intermittently done some knitting and felting.  I just love yarn and fiber! 

Fruits and veggies.  Crocheted with organic cotton yarn and stuffed with bamboo fiberfill.

Shoulder bag crocheted with self-striping wool yarn.

Stellated Dodecahedron.

One day at a Stitch 'n Bitch, I met a guy, I can't remember his name because all the ladies there that night kept calling him "Crochet Guy," and he told us all that he was a student at the UofO and his major was called "Textiles and Weaving".  Hmm.  I decided that night that if I ever chose to go back to school and get a degree that I would choose that as my major.  After all, fibers, if not art in general, have been the most consistent source of my happiness and well-being.

Shortly afterward, I got an application to the University of Oregon, and I have been working my way toward my goal since then.  The only reason I haven't declared my major before now, is that I need to apply separately to the Art Department and I wanted to get some art related experience on my degree audit before taking the big leap.  Now that I have studied Art 101, Art 199 (Bookbinding!) and some Art History, I am compiling my portfolio and getting the application together as well as being signed up for Art 115 for the upcoming Winter Term.  I am looking forward to learning how to weave and many of the other art forms accessible to me at the University!

These are the journals I made last month in Art 199

And for a few final images, my most recent projects are some things I made for my partner for Christmas.  A hat with a bill and a decorative strap with buttons, and a felted dragon:

I know this is rather long, but believe me when I say it is the abridged version!  There are a lot of other things I could have mentioned, but chose to leave out for the sake of brevity.