Jaedyn Vela
When I type these words, I think about how in Linguistics, words are arbitrary. It makes me think about art in the same way. Art is anything and everything we want it to be; the beautiful, swirled colors forming a distinct hue of a familiar face, the scribbles of a child’s hand, even the way a rock has been hollowed and worn from years of running water. Art. This piece took me over 15 hours, and if you look past all the colors, progress, and meaning, you will see…the butt of my high school art teacher. When this mural was just a thought in my brain, I pictured our school mascot holding back the curtain of our senior’s future, graduation! As I began to rough sketch this amazing thought from my mind onto paper, welp, the mascot looked like a chicken with protruding penises coming out of its head, instead of a trojan’s helmet with feathers. My principal & art teacher took one look and laughed at it. They had faith in my abilities, though. This picture reminds me of how scared I was to start. How scared I was to mess up. It reminds me to just do! Mistakes will happen, but beautiful things come from overcoming our fears. We may have an idea, and when it comes down to it, it may not turn out quite how we wanted it at first, but that’s the beauty of trying and failing and learning and growing. Just do…no butts allowed!
This day was a stressful one. There, in the background, you can see the long string of words on my laptop. I started to space out. Funny, how at first, this light did not catch my attention. Often, many things can be so easily ignored and taken for granted. Too worried to take notice at first, there, on my hand, was the beauty of light reflecting off the glass of my front door and onto my hand. The simple, yet complex science of light reflection and refraction. I am “holding” the light. Right then and there I smiled. “I hold the light.” I hold the power to be happy and calm even during times of stress, anxiety, and adversity. I have the power to see the beauty in all the little things. Everything.
Still. Lonely. And beautifully broken. A peaceful, unplanned moment. Home alone one day, I gazed outside my window at the beautiful mix of the sunset. It was cold. I wanted to put this moment to picture, and at that moment I was thinking about love. About how there is so much love, lack of love, self-love… nevertheless, love. What a beautiful word. A beautiful and dangerous word… Always thinking back to when as a child I would play with the condensation on the window, I breathed, and the sound of breath being taken from my lungs reminded me of how a beautiful moment can take one’s breath away. Fogged up glass spread and grew, and my finger made its way, forming the letters, What a beautiful, unplanned picture. The condensation of the love stained window was dewy. All the little water particles could be seen making up the whole of the fog. I watched it slowly fade, and the words disappeared like they were never there… but I know they were there. I blew on the window again, and there, it appeared again. Love. It’s dewy. It’s a million little droplets and particles making up a whole. It fades, and it grows again, appearing just as quickly as it disappears.