Fertile Field: This Wallflower Blossomed

From the Summer, 2002 edition of Fertile Field

This Wallflower Blossomed

By Allison L. Klein

In June 1999, my life took on a new shade of rosiness as I was introduced to an exciting new medium: paint. This was the first of three summers in which I would participate as an artist’s apprentice at the city of Albuquerque’s Art Summer Institute (ASI). That first summer at ASI, we delved into painting; there was no hesitation. Large buckets of house paint clanged as they hit the ground. Because of the seemingly never-ending supply of paint, we were prompted to use the paint liberally, creating gestural pieces that possessed a certain “painterly quality.”
That first year, my sophomore year, I was very shy and reserved. Being thrust into my apprenticeship, I was not only excited about being paid to create art, but I was nervous about working with real live artists. As everyone knows, it is not easy making a living as an artist. So, to me, these artists, who were all very eloquent, passionate, and outspoken, were like Gods. Not only did I want to learn everything they had to teach, but I wanted to share their self-assuredness and confidence. By the end of the third summer, I reached my goal.

During the second summer, just after my junior year, I used art as a kind of therapy. Like most teenagers, I found my junior year to be extremely stressful: I had tons of homework, spent most of my day at school, then went to work for 16 hours a week. In addition to this stress, my friends were changing as everyone grew up at different paces and gained new and varying interests. One of the most painful experiences was watching the friendship between my best friend of eleven years and I end. Nothing could be done about it. We had simply become different people and the old friendship that had gotten us through our adolescent years no longer supported our changing roles in society. But what does someone do when she has lost that person that she spent more time with than even her own sister? I had grown up being the “follower” and my best friend had been the “leader.” Who was I to follow now? More importantly: who was I?

At ASI that summer, I immersed myself in art. My pieces came from the soul and they spoke about what lies within us all: the hopes, fears, laughter, lies, deception, beauty, etc. I worked intensively on one crayon-based self-portrait. The triptych stood about five feet tall and was made out of plywood and drizzled crayon wax that had been melted by a blow-torch. By expanding my understanding of media, I greatly increased my abilities and possibilities as an artist. I learned to be more independent as I talked to the other apprentices. As they quickly welcomed me into their lives, I slowly welcomed them into mine. It even turned out that those very same artists that I had looked up to as omniscient beings when it came to art, helped me find myself as a person. They encouraged me to believe in myself as an artist by always asking my opinion about decisions and making sure that I helped them critique all of the art.

The following summer (summer of 2001), I was welcomed back to the program as an assistant to the painting instructor. As the assistant, I helped set up every project, sometimes got to join in the activity myself, and even got to help instruct the new apprentices. People came to me for help because they now saw in me something similar to what I had always seen in my instructors. It was amazing! I was in a most precious position in which I could give to the new apprentices what my instructors had given to me: a new lust for life in which I felt invincible! That final summer left me with a feeling of euphoria: I now know that I should never fear the things to come because, somehow, they always work out in the end. You just have to learn to open up your heart and trust those around you.

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