This piece is what I created for project 2, “Different, Not Less Than”.  For this assignment we were instructed to read a book by Oliver Sacks.  I chose the book “Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain”.  This book is full of many incredible stories of how music has impacted people who live with different conditions.  Originally, before choosing the book, my idea was to focus on living with anxiety, which is what I have done. But after reading the book I was inspired further to add music to the piece. Both music and art have always been a huge part of my life and are very important to me.  They are both my outlet as well as my comfort.  For most of my life I have suffered from anxiety and depression. The two kind of go hand in hand.  When you suffer from anxiety, it can be frustrating and overwhelming and can cause you to feel depressed at times. I never had the courage to speak so freely of it like I do now.  Anxiety can be caused by many things, such as stress or a traumatic experience.  However, some people are born with a hereditary gene that causes them to suffer from it.  Sometimes medication is prescribed, sometimes therapy, or both.  Meditation is also a helpful thing for some people. I wanted to create a visual representation of what living with anxiety feels like.  This female figure represents me, and all the things that make up myself as an individual; how I feel on the inside.  My true self.  I’ve included symbols of music, art, writing, interest in astronomy, the ocean, my cats, meditation and my personal spirituality.  They are all the things that are my light inside.  However….this person I am inside is often trapped.  There is a shell surrounding the physical body that keeps the light hidden.  Often times people can only see what’s on the outside.  Originally I was going to use paper mache to create this shell.  I wanted something hard and durable and tough to break.  But then I thought of an eggshell.  Eggs are easy to break, but not always.  It depends how you attempt to break them.  If you use one hand to squeeze a raw egg as hard as you can, it’s nearly impossible to break. It doesn’t seem like it would be, but it is.  The shell is tougher than one would think.  I wanted to use the cracked eggshell pieces surrounding the body to symbolize there is a way out, and also a way in.  Music for me has always been a great comfort. On the outside, the rest of the area is covered with a fabric.  The fabric represents a blanket, like when a small child carries a security blanket. It’s the symbol of comfort.  Glued onto the blanket are CDs with titles of some of my favorite songs.  These are songs that I find uplifting and soothing.  Music has helped people in extraordinary ways.  For me it has done wonders and it’s something that is always there when you need it.  Also the act of creating this piece was my other source of comfort;  my artwork.  I’ve decided to title this piece “Breakthrough”.

The  Oliver Sacks book I have chosen to read for this project is Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain.  As Dr. Sacks stated in an interview I watched, “music plays a part in most of our lives”.  This is indeed true.  Music is known as a universal language.  Most people can relate to music in one way or another. There are so many different types of music, from classical to heavy metal.  Certain types of music relate to some people while others resonate with different types.  But music has been a part of humanity for many centuries.  While most of us just enjoy music or going to a concert, or perhaps playing our own, some people have extraordinary tales of musical related incidents.  This book is a compilation of different stories of people who have had unique experiences with music.  Some people have had brain injuries due to an accident while others were atypical in some way.  One story was about an incredible situation of a man who was struck by lightning.  After it happened he suddenly felt the need to listen to piano music.  He was never interested in that type of music before his accident, but after, he felt compelled to listen to it. He started looking for any piano music he could find.  Soon he had the desire to play the music himself.  Ironically he was able to get his hands on a used piano that someone was getting rid of. After he acquired the piano he began to teach himself to play.  Another interesting case was that of a guy named Matt Giordano.  Matt suffered from Tourette Syndrome.  At the age of 12 he was suicidal because he could not control his violent outbursts against his family.  During his four year stay in the hospital he discovered drumming.  He learned to play the drums and became very good at it, and he also discovered it helped control his ticks. He referred to it as “washing out the ticks”.  The way music has impacted and has helped people is incredible.  Music therapy is used in hospitals for sick patients because it is recognized as being healing.  It’s even used in the NICU (Newborn Intensive Care Unit).  The subject for my project is going to be anxiety and depression, which go hand in hand but I will mainly focus on anxiety.  As someone who has suffered from it, music has helped me immensely.  It is a comfort and it is uplifting and inspiring as well as an outlet. That is why I chose this book.  Both art and music have played a very important role in my life and they are how I cope. Dr. Sacks has done very interesting and extensive research on the effects of music and the brain.  I definitely recommend this book.

For this project I have selected a topic that is very personal to me.  I have chosen to focus on anxiety and depression.  Many people worldwide, unfortunately suffer from this.  Many times they suffer in silence.  They do not want to appear weird or different from their peers.  I have lived with this most of my life and it has strongly affected me in the past.  Both music and art are very important to me because they have helped me cope and get through really hard times.  This has been said for many people.  I have chosen to focus on the Oliver Sacks book “Musicophilia:  Tales of Music and the Brain” for this project and I plan to incorporate a musical theme in part of my work.  I will create a mixed media piece, which is not only my favorite way to work, but I feel like it expresses much emotion.  I plan to create an abstract likeness of myself that expresses the feeling of living with anxiety and depression and the weight it bears on a person as well as the uninvited mask it creates for us.  I also feel it will be a great follow up piece to my memory project on past lives, being that it has been said that anxiety in a present life may be due to past life trauma.

This is the piece that was inspired by the idea of past life memories.  I love to work in mixed media, but for this specific piece I feel it also had important relevance The idea of living many different lives and having them be part of one soul and possibly have some influence on who you are today is a mixture, therefore this piece is a mixture of the media it was created from.  I used both water color and acrylic paint, as well as printed paper, marker, colored pencil and kinetic sand and real sea shells, attached using hot glue.  The figure on the bottom right was created with graphite pencil, and then I took a picture of her and used a photo editing app to give her a vintage xerox- looking effect. I like the effect because xerox is a copy, and I wanted the idea of her being a copy of this previous person who had lived before her, as well as other lives before that.

Here are some process photos as well as the finished piece:

For this project I decided to focus on past lives memories.  The idea of reincarnation is not something everyone believes in.  Many eastern polytheistic religions believe that we live many lifetimes, and that each life time is part of our soul growth and we have lessons to learn and karma to adjust.  Most people, even though they may believe they have lived before, do not seem to have any memory of a previous life.  But every so often there is someone who does have memory of a life they have lived before.  Not all memories are very clear and not all details are clear.  For example they may recall the house they grew up in but not remember where it was.  They may have memories of people or events that have made an impact on them.  It has been said that trauma endured in a past life can carry on to another life.  It’s believed by some that a person’s phobias or anxieties may be linked to past life trauma, especially if it is linked to how they died;  perhaps in a fire or drowning, or a falling from a high place.  There was one story I researched of a three year old boy near the border of Syria, who remembered being murdered in his past life.  The murder had only taken place one year prior to his birth, but the body was never found and the murderer was never caught.  The little boy was able to remember his previous name and where his body was buried and he led village elders to the body and the killer was caught. Many stories you hear like this almost always involve small children with such memories.  They say it’s because they were so recently on the other side.  The older you get and the longer you’ve been alive, the more you forget.  This is also why many young children tend to be clairvoyant and able to sense the supernatural.