old artist statement

I’ve been going through an old journal, and it’s weird.

i was a totally different person. On some aspects, i miss that person. old jane thought she could change the world.

Anyway, here’s my old artist statement. i need to update it. =)

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“But then, no artist is normal; if he were, he wouldn’t be an artist. Normal men don’t create works of art. They eat, sleep, hold down routine jobs, and die. You are hypersensitive to life and nature; that’s why you are able to interpret for the rest of us. But if you are not careful, that very hypersensitiveness will lead you to your destruction. The strain of it breaks every artist in time.” - Irving Stone, Lust for Life

Ultimately, that is the reason why I do anything creative—to remain sane. Starting off as a big fat crybaby, I did not handle life very well. Anything and everything set me off. Jerk boy in class called me stupid, I cried mourning over my stupidity. My mom said that I couldn’t have another Barbie doll because I already had six, and I cried because I wanted seven. People told me that I cried too much, and I bit my lip fighting back tears, but ended up crying anyways because I bit my lip too hard. Eventually the waterworks stopped, but the emotions didn’t. I couldn’t understand why I seemed to have a harder time handling situations, nor did I know what to do. When someone would ask me what was wrong, I would give a vague answer. Not because I didn’t want to talk, but because I didn’t have the words to describe the unsettling feeling which seemed to have made a permanent home. Sometime in sixth grade, I was introduced to the band Gravity Kills. I’m still not quite sure how I was introduced, but I remember the first time I listened to their cd. I was doing math homework, polishing my multiplication skills when the words “I face the change, I’ve tasted pain, digging a hole, now take the blame. I fell aside, I cast away, covered in shame, now take the blame” interrupted my concentration. There was something about the moment that felt so comfortable. Even though the lyrics didn’t exactly describe how I felt, there was something about the combination of the angst in his voice, and intensity of the instruments that communicated to where words don’t belong. Initially I thought it was just this song. Then the conclusion was that this band was able to create that effect. Eventually it was discovered that not only was music, as a whole, was able to correspond to my depths, but also images, videos, and sculpture. A couple years later God ravished my heart. As my obsession grew, it became harder to find music or art that could pinpoint what the back of my throat wanted to scream. My pastor encouraged me to start writing my own songs. The lyrics were overly vague, and eventually I would find that my chord progressions were the same progressions for several other hundred songs, but that was hardly an issue for me. It was refreshing to just have something else in the world that knew exactly what was going on inside, even if it was something I produced myself. Most of the works I do are overly personal, and if someone were to ask me how, I would not be able to give them a response that allowed for comprehension. Looking over what I have produced, a good 75% refers to God in some manner. It’s not an obligation of any sort, but because He’s what prods me toward insanity. Sometimes it’s His love that blows me out of proportion, and other times it’s my inability to understand why things happen the way they do. At the end of the day, having God in my life rips logic apart and being able to translate that into physical material keeps me from going something something.