Journey to the Coffee Shop Exhibit
It began long before it began when I was living in Wyoming and it was very cold and I saw a poster for a watercolor class. I said to myself, “self, take this art class. It will be fun.” A few days later I walked myself to the old train depot in downtown Sheridan. And when I arrived, I found out that everyone in the Tuesday watercolor class had always been there. I was fresh meat. In the sense that it was my first time to be with them and that I was the only one with zero experience with a brush so instead of one teacher I ended up with 17. You’d think that would make me really good but it did not.
Fast forward. I moved a lot. I lived a lot. And then I got diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2016. And that was weird. And I had a million people doing a million beautiful things for me and one of those things was a gift of a blank canvas. My friend built me the largest canvas she could fit in her Subaru and said, “here you go." And she also brought a few brushes because she didn’t know if I had any and she was right.
photo by marykatherinecreative.com
I had a lot of feelings then. Because I am a human and that is what humans do. But mostly had spent my life denying all feelings ever and that wasn’t working so around this time I was also on a mission to feel again.
My journey here was basically a combination of me trying to learn how to feel, cancer, a watercolor class in Wyoming with 17 teachers and a friend that was super rad and gave great gifts. And Michaels. After I got the canvas I popped over to Michaels to buy some random paints that were 98% discounted. Thank you, Michaels, for inspiring neophyte artists everywhere with all of your beautiful discounts.
I painted, I felt, I grieved, I lost, I longed, I changed, I began to find my voice and painting pushed me to keep doing that. These were for me. Maybe the first thing in my life that I did entirely for me. I had a unique ability to trade authenticity for acceptance and this was a safe space to learn not to do that so easily. And one day I put them on my Instagram story (because that’s what you do when you’re like not ready to commit to a full-blown post but can stomach 24 hours of people glimpsing) and I did that a time or two and somehow a nice human saw that and said, “ hey, want to put some of this up in a really rad coffee shop someday?” And I played it cool with an:
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
and then thought about it and remembered that a) we are all dying anyway so fear is no big deal b) why not? C) life is short d) every other cliché ever.
I conferred with my best friend “hey, do you think I can do this without worrying what other people will think or neglecting myself to please the crowd of coffee-shop art lookers?” and she was like “What do you think? (like all best friends, that stand in as therapists and make you answer your own questions.) and I said “YES! I can work through this and also, I have no more room in my apartment for more paintings.”
So, here we are. Here you are. Here I am. That has been my journey to the coffee shop exhibit. I hope you do something that you are for all intents and purposes entirely unqualified for. And I hope you keep sharing whatever you have experienced in this world in whatever way feels good for you.
