Everything happens at once. Always. No matter if it's good or bad. Thankfully, right now, all the stuff happening in my life is really good. In the two month hiatus from blogging and posting much of anything on Facebook, I've finally gotten my "big girl job" - I'm truly using my master's degree at this point! - and my spouse and I are having our first child! Will my art change now that I'm a mother? Not my style, but the things I actually make likely will. I've got a painting planned for our baby, and I'd love to make him/her a board book at some point, too. The sewing machine is waiting for me to learn how to use it to make clothes for myself as I get further along and for baby when s/he arrives, too.
Now to the title of this blog. Some friends have suggested that because my PC is such a dinosaur and painfully slow that that must be why I don't like technology. After thinking about it for a bit, however, the ambivalence bordering on dislike started in childhood. When my family first got a PC, I was 10 years old. It was interesting and noisy - dot matrix printer. Then Nintendo came out sometime shortly after, and our neighbors got one. It was so exciting for my little brother and his friends. They taught me how to play Mario World and eventually, Mario Kart. It was fun, but just something I did while babysitting the kids who had the Nintendo. Otherwise, I was busy playing outside and making art. In college, email had just come out for the public, so someone had to teach me how to do that. Once I really got into my coursework at LSU, they were mostly studio classes, so I didn't need a computer for much other than to type an artist statement every few weeks. The friends who did graphic design used Macs, which didn't make any sense to me (still don't), and while I knew they were talented, I discounted the use of computers to aid in art because it seemed less creative to me at the time - the whole handmade vs machine sort of thinking. Fast forward to now....
My job requires that I know how to help people find things within a database (which is on a computer), learn to use their eReaders, and solve basic IT issues. All the years of somewhat intentionally avoiding technology are now sort of staring me in the face. On the one hand, I completely understand the frustration of learning a new device. Smart phones even trip me up sometimes, although, I do own one. On the other hand, the excuse of being a certain age and not knowing how to type is really hard for me to believe since typewriters were around in all of our lifetimes. The keys are in a different order, but they work about the same.
How is any of this related to art? In the same vein as the likelihood of introducing new materials to my portfolio now that I'm a mom, I'm fairly certain that learning some more tricks and tips with computers at work will also influence what kind of art I get into in the future. Don't worry, graphic designer friends, you'll always have an edge on me! But I can also more clearly see the value in keeping up with technology now because it affects my livelihood - the one that pays the bills and the one that's a hobby.
