Joy Development
Joy Development Podcast
Grace
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Grace

Finding grace in the studio to keep going

I write this, having just found hidden in my inbox the fourth rejection of the four applications I sent out this summer.

I’ve written before about how to handle rejection and how to avoid ‘rejection bunching’ by pacing your applications. But each of these opportunities was so appealing, I couldn’t resist. In my mind’s eye, as I wrote, I could already see myself:
– learning to gild,
– putting on a solo show, sharing for the first time my strip club photos printed onto velvet alongside gold-on-black sketches of performers,
– developing my avant-garde sculpture drawings paired with performer images,
– receiving a fellowship that would bring visibility.

Each opportunity promised something wonderful. And all of them, this time, were not to be.

The melancholy comes from feeling as though no one took a chance on me. To reframe that sting, I have to dig deep for grace. Because my worth, my talent, my potential were never on the line in these applications. I wasn’t asking for validation, because I’m valid already. Rejection though, has a way of sneaking around the back and undermining how you feel unconsciously. That’s why I’m digging deep for grace. Deeper than the doubt that has set in a little.

I also think about grace from another direction: in my studio. It sets my teeth on edge to hear the word perfection bandied around. Perfection is my nemesis. If you are searching for perfection in the studio, what on earth are you doing? How do you innovate, or find pleasure, or imagine your future audience? Perfection is insular, inward, it’s restrictive, and punishing.

I choose grace instead of perfection.

When I sit at my studio desk, I honestly don’t know if the work I make will have visual appeal, will hold my research, will convey something I care about, or will delight a viewer. I make to find out. To see if what I’m thinking about can live up to my wildest hopes and dreams for my practice.

And if it doesn’t? I learn.

But also—I’m not always the best arbiter of my own work. Sometimes I want to throw something away, and a friend will see brilliance in it. I rely on those friends. I send snaps to them in WhatsApp: Are these any good? And sometimes their answer surprises me.

So this month, I offer you: grace.

Grace to keep going.
Grace to keep sharing.
Grace to enjoy your own work.
Grace to believe in art, in the face of everything that makes us feel we should abandon art and abandon ourselves.

And if you need a place to top up your grace, mentoring—with me, or with someone else—can be a way to recalibrate. To centre what matters to you. To shuck off the stories, inner or outer, that no longer serve. Mentoring works, because it’s a space you get to define, and if you need to assess both rejections and successes to learn from them, before you let them go, we can do that.

The image here, I’ve just finished and I need to send to friends to see if it’s any good, I don’t know yet. The series is called ‘The In Between’, and I’m trying to use the dancing body to convey interior emotions. This one might be conveying grace—maybe.

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