Now that the degree show has opened in Chatham, it’s time for my last post.
I’ve been thinking about why it’s meant so much to me. Why have I been trying so hard to prove myself, and to whom?
In 2000 I told my ceramics tutor at MassArt, Ben Ryterband, that I was dropping out to get married. As he walked down the corridor, he turned dramatically (as actors in American movies do) and said, “You’re good.” I held on to that for years, probably because I felt it was all I had.
When I came to the UK as a 21 year old newlywed, it was with the promise that I could start again where I’d left off, but that went unfulfilled. All of my ideas hung in the air, and getting to grips with my new life, and what I was supposed to be from then on, made my former art practice seem alien and out of place. Was it actually any good?
At first, I didn’t have a kiln, so I tried to go back to painting. Nothing worked. I had no confidence at all left. Most of my ambitions or ideas were batted away with, “You wouldn’t be able to do that,” or, “You can’t.” I believed it eventually. I assembled a ceramics studio and spent my free time working away at that, but without the grand, groundbreaking result that would convince the world (and myself) that yes, I was actually good. By the time I was expecting my son, and could no longer reach into a top-loading kiln with my expansive pregnant belly, I felt that I could never get myself back.
After I discovered a few years later that my husband didn’t exactly share my view of monogamy – or living with me, for that matter – I sold the entire contents of my ceramics studio in a panic for £100 and moved a few villages away. Sewing handbags and cushions to sell to country ladies wasn’t the worst thing in the world, but it just wasn’t worth it after all the work I put into it. And I put a lot of work into it, mostly at night when my son was asleep. Apart from the laborious nature of the work, I just fell out of love with it. It wasn’t me, but I hadn’t been me for years. It came down to now-or-never, do the degree or forget about it forever. The plan: be practical, become a teacher for the term-time work, and that’ll take care of the single mother/scapegoat for society’s woes problem. Then I could get far away from here. But what was I good at again?
I was nervous when I started the course in the second year of the HND, because I wanted to prove that they’d made the right decision in letting me in at that stage. As soon as I realised that it was alright, the goals changed; I had to prove that I hadn’t wasted all those years, that I was still good at this. But good enough for whom? Or what?
Where did this obsession with validation come from? I think it’s come from so many years of being unfulfilled and unhappy, and trying to make up for lost time. Sometimes I think of how my life would be if I’d have done my four years at MassArt… would I have gone back to Barbados, or stayed in Boston? I never had any plans whatsoever to even visit England on holiday. Of course, I couldn’t change anything, because I couldn’t imagine my life without my son.
Since September, I’ve learned an amazing amount about myself – what I’m capable of, what I’m not good at, and what I want to do. Being a primary/secondary teacher isn’t on my list. I’ve realised that all of those years weren’t wasted, but that they’ve made me the driven, focused worker I am today. Now, I’ve got my first-class honours degree. I know it doesn’t define my real value, but means a lot to me, a lot more than it could ever have done if I’d have finished it nine years ago. I do know now that the only person I wanted to prove anything to was myself. And now that I’ve done it, whatever comes next is going to be all right.
