I graduated today. It was a cathartic and emotional experience. For the last year, I’ve been in a pressure cooker with 50 of some of the the finest human beings I have ever come to know. I love them. Ehren, Kara, Justin, Marcos, Angela, eddie, Emily, Michael, Sam, Matt, Jesse, Eiko, Ben, Hwei-Li, Justin O, I love you. You are so great. I can’t believe that our time as senior painting studio mates has come to an end. Now we move onto a new chapter of out lives. Some of us will keep in close contact, others of us, well, we won’t see r talk to each other very often. We have a special memory now of our time together in those crazy studios. A lot of our relationships will exist mainly in memories. This is sad and beautiful and heartbreaking. I didn’t want to say goodbye. I didn’t want it to end. But here I am, on the edge of a new chapter in my life. I hope I can weave as many of you into it as I can. But I know time and life pulls people apart.
I left the party tonight crying and river. I cried all the way home in the taxi. When I got home, I cried even harder. I understand now why it is so important to take some time to decompress. I also understand now why it was so important for me to try and find some new things to start up, and I am so thankful to have found my new job I feel like my life is guided by some bigger force. And I must have some spirit guide always looking out for me. Dad? Is that you? These intense feelings of leaving this huge chapter of my life would be so much harder without some base, some anchor.
Art school? It’s not about making images. It’s about looking at the world with eyes wide open, and trying to change it for the better, in whatever small way I can. Wonderment, generosity, love, these are the tools I honed in art school, and the people I shared this experience with make it all worth fighting for. For them, for me, for the whole world.