“You might as well be a basket weaver.”
These are the encouraging words I received from my father the day I announced my college major. I had just finished my general education at Sierra College, while working at my father’s successful local engineering office. Besides management I was drawing house plans, creating cross sections, designing standard, pressure distribution and sand filtration septic systems BY HAND. I am a pre AutoCad dinosaur. I knew how to manually draft using latitude and longitude, scales, compasses and protractors before the commonly used programs (and cell phones and the internet) were invented. I probably should have majored in marketing or business. My first site visit was pretty entertaining for the contractor at least. I had no idea what the things I designed and drew on paper actually looked like in real life. Walking through the job site with the contractor it looked like piles of dirt, holes and pipes to me. He asked if I wanted to see the septic tank and inspect the pump. Sure. What was I supposed to be looking for? Fake it ‘til you make it. I finally figured it out in the end, counted holes and wrote scribbles on the paper pretending my notes were important. The guy knew what he was doing...hopefully. Looking back, my brother didn’t exist yet, so I was my father’s hope for the future. I am guessing he wanted me to take over the engineering business, which I was pretty great at doing. I almost went into engineering, Environmental science. Peggy Zarillo, originally from the Nevada County Health Department, started working for our Engineering firm and was going to train me to fill her previous position. Peggy was particular and I was a perfectionist. She would only let me draw and produce her engineered designs. We had a good working chemistry and I already had been trained to do much of the work that was required for the county position. I began college at the State level and my major was still undecided. I needed to decide on a major upon completion of my foreign language and religious requirements in order to continue on toward a Bachelor’s degree. My English professor insisted I major in Literature. I scoffed at him. What was I going to do with a degree in Literature? I’m so mad at myself now for that. I probably would have LOVED that course in life and might even be successful, ha ha, by this point. He was a wonderful man and a great teacher, goodness bless Mr. Bill Hotchkiss, a novelist and poet who said my work reminded him of Walt Whitman http://beatnews.jackmagazine.com/hotchkiss-bill/ . He saw something in me that I thought I hid pretty well. I prayed for an answer to my dilemma, and I found my miracle on the sidewalk while I walked around between classes on the college campus. A manhole lid spelled it out. Sanitation. What the? My name is right in the center of that word. S-ANITA-tion. Did I really want to spend the rest of my life designing where poop and pee go? I marched into the next meeting with my advisor and chose Art as my major. It wasn’t easy. I struggled with every fiber of my being to be the best, to get straight A’s, which I did, and to follow my dream to do something great in a field that no one (except other artists) understand. Art is my passion, it’s my heart and it expands beyond my very being. I almost quit multiple times, it was too hard to duplicate the Renaissance master’s techniques. Rip apart the light understand volume then recreate a believable world within this one. Our American society does not respect what I do. My father’s cruel words and disrespect for my profession are engraved in my memory because he has no idea how mathematical art is, how truly complicated each representation is, more so than any of the house plans, or engineered septic designs or plans I drew for his engineering business. My soul is exposed in every piece I show. You get to judge my heart and weigh it every day. I was afraid to write because I may love that just as much or more, but now I do both every day. I’m finally free. If you didn’t notice basket weaving is pretty incredible. Check out the Native American museum downtown and make the tiniest basket in the world for me out of grass you picked at the river then talk smack. Thank you, poop hole. You may have saved my soul.
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