Its kind of funny, life is all about perspectives. What you do and the direction you take your life or your life takes you, is all about your current point of view and whether or not it is a path of resistance you can deal with. Sometimes, depending on if we are stubborn, we may do things on “principle” or “just because” or because we are deaf to our own hearts – that little voice that speaks to each of us. Each of us has a “talent” or call it a “gift”, something that you may excel in, without or with minimal effort. Some of us find this out early in life, some late, some never. Some listen to that tiny voice and pick up the torch and run, towards the voice that speaks from the heart. Some hear it, some stick their fingers in their ears and scream “la, la, la, I can’t hear you”, some are honestly deaf to it. It is said, that “God never gives you something that you cannot handle”. You can ignore it, eventually you may get tired of hearing it – it happened to me that way.
I started drawing as a child. My father was a commercial artist and taught commercial art at the Printing Institute of Illinois. My parents always encouraged me to do art, either with pen and pencil or markers – “squeakees” as my dad called them. They squeaked when you used them, meaning that ink was flowing and they were not dried out. Never did I consider not doing something with art – it was something I was “geared” to do. In grade school, I was always one of the better students when it came to art. When I was in high school, I excelled at architecture and drafting. I loved architecture. That was what I really wanted to do, except that when I tried math or physics – I failed miserably. I was told, “forget it, kid”. I felt that I had to “settle” for a future in fine arts and by the end of my high school career, it was due to my inability to understand math and physics. Enrolling in the American Academy of Art, having my portfolio accepted, I was excited to go to the city and get my first real art training. Commercial art was a language that I was used to speaking and had some natural abilities. I don’t think I ever really did anything original. I think I always took what someone did and mimicked it. The teacher that I had at American Academy was the same teacher that my father had. Yep, I went to the same school as my dad. I had his teacher 25+ years later. My teacher pushed and pushed me to be original, very few things were ever “approved”. I think he was trying to do me a favor, but I just thought he was trying to be a “dick”. Looking back, I don’t think I was ready to hear what he was saying. I never really finished my first year fundamentals class, I completed only 10 of 12 projects approved. I was tired, frustrated, and burnt out from a creativity standpoint. I loved life drawing but didn’t want to be what I considered to be a “fine” artist. I wanted to be an illustrator or commercial artist. I wanted to say “fuck” art. It was then that I took my life in a completely different direction – or so I thought. I asked my artist friends, (the guys that I respected) what is the thing that is the furthest away from art? Science and math! That was the direction I was going to head.
Enter math and science. Now when I was in high school, I was not the sharpest tool in the drawer. Looking back, my meds for epilepsy kept me in a fog. That and the fact that I had ADD (never knew that until later). In high school, the farthest math I had was “Senior Consumer” math. Essentially, math for the common man. Balance the check book, understand cook books, figure out the light bill, etc. After leaving art school I took math 110 at College Of DuPage or COD it was high school algebra, in my new school – I was hooked. It was like I now understood math, took college algebra, trig, calc i, ii, iii, and iv. Took diff eq, linear algebra. It was like the clouds parted and the sun shone. All of the sudden, I understood math. At the time, I was also taking electronics technology and was doing awesome. I really liked the junction theory of transistors. I started taking physics and voila, did well in that also. After COD, I went to NIU and was doing decent in physics and found myself at odds with theory. I was losing sight of what I was doing. I was able to understand the mathematics and solve the problems, but I couldn’t understand the application of the actual problem or it’s reasoning. It was weird, mathematically it all made sense. Conceptually, I had no clue. It was time to finish my degree and get the hell out of physics and out of school.
The thing that makes me special is not that I’m a great analyst. It’s not that I have this special understanding or awesome problem solving ability. It’s that I can jump to an accurate conclusion based on some completely unconnected intangibles what I call intuition or experience. Somehow, my creativity is a huge influence in my intuition. It’s like a bolt out of the blue. I can’t explain it, I just roll with it. I think it comes from the creative part of my brain – unexplainable. What makes a person creative where others are not? Its my personal belief that everyone can be taught almost anything. You may never be great, but you can be good. Is good – good enough? I don’t know. It’s a personal choice. It goes back to my first statement, can you live with the resistance? But this is what sets me apart. I also tend to be introspective. I love color and am very visual. I like the mystical properties of colors, light, and glass.
No matter what job I hold, I’ve always used my creativity in ways that amaze me in retrospect. I look back and think, “wow”. I can’t believe I did that or figured that out. I’ve been doing IT for almost 30 years and I’m still amazed. I love to learn. I love change. I love to be creative. I love my muse. I look forward to retirement where I will change my creative focus and pursue my love that I have pushed and tamped down for all these years. The thing that I was scared of – Fine Art. It is the embodiment of pure creativity in my mind. Controlled creativity in a defined field is where I have made my career – IT. Unleashed creativity is where I will reinvent my career. Or, that is my hope anyway. God willing. At least I will still be happy – that is what I tell myself. I cannot continue to be happy in my current career. I see the end of the road, the horizon is no longer out of sight. I am starting to grow weary of the constant technological change – sometimes for change sake. It is starting to grate on my nerves. I guess when you have to change because its expected and you don’t have a choice, it’s easy to just roll with it and accept. But when you know you have a choice, its sometimes hard to pick the difficult path. That’s where fortitude, integrity, and execution comes in to spur you on – to do the right thing and make the hard choice.
I think that it is something visceral from my childhood that draws me to colored glass. It is probably the dichotomy in the differences of my neighborhood church’s – St. Rita’s: the grandiose scale of the large, colorful round windows, streaming light in on the south side of Chicago. The environment was cold and aloof – marble, glass, and distant. Then there was the flipside of our suburban church: the warm, carpeted, touchable, thick, rough-hewn, stained glass of St. Mary’s church in Darien (OLP). The church was warm and cozy – made more such in my mind by the stained glass. The warm sunlight streaming in through these windows – always the rising sun in the morning or the setting sunlight depending on the mass times. But that’s what I remember. The one that impacts my mind the most was this red heart surrounded by flames, which incidentally is omitted from the stained glass on the parish website. But the beautiful afternoon summer sunlight streaming through the reds of the heart is what I remember the most. I think that light through glass is what really fascinates me – it can be transformative and emotional. It is what draws me to stained glass, neon, blown glass, and glass in general. I guess that is the subliminal part that draws me to collect Czech art glass. Each representative piece is like a small stained glass object now that I think about it. Funny, I have been collecting it since the early ninety’s and never realized the drivers behind it. It’s also what draws me to the impressionists, each piece is a virtual “stained glass” piece with the brush strokes as small panes with no leaded separations.
-Rat
