Not Too Old

Written by: Asilia Franklin-Phipps

I do not have a studio, but I have dreams of having one. For now, I have taken over our dining room because it is sunny, and I can look out the window and drink cups of matcha. I can put my headphones on and be transported to a time and space better than the one I normally inhabit.

I started making art last summer. A series of small decisions led me to sitting on a stool in a big room at Pratt, taking a mixed media class in their continuing education program. I sat with three other people, including the teacher. For two weeks, we sat together cutting, gluing, painting, and talking. I sat next to an undergraduate student who was in her early 20s, but everyone else in the class was my age. Our teacher did show us techniques, but in this very noncommittal way. Each day she showed us how to make something and showed us how artists had used a similar approach. After class I would walk with a classmate for a block or two, stop by the art supply store, and then take the G-train to Lorimer, then walk to the hotel. In the morning, I would walk to the train, stopping to get a coffee, carrying a big pad of Bristol paper, and a tote bag full of Exacto knives and glue sticks. On these walks to the Lorimer stop, I thought about when I lived in South Williamsburg in the early 2000s. Then I walked to the Lorimer stop so I could go to Columbia where I was a very unserious and unfocused graduate student. In many ways that was when I started to make the life I have now, although I did not really know it then. Most days my friend Alex would meet me after class, and ask me what I did that day. I include this detail because he is a working artist and him taking an interest in my emerging efforts helped me gain the confidence to keep trying. He flipped through my sketchbook, balancing his skateboard on his knee, and asked me about colors. We have known each other for 15 years but had never had this in common before so never talked in this way. In his odd, nonchalant way, he told me to keep going, which felt important to me especially at the beginning.

A lot of things I learned; I was really excited about at the time. I was very into paper weaving, molding paste, and watercolor pencils. I don’t do any of those things anymore but love that I know how to do them. I am grateful for the knowledge of adhesives, different kinds of paper, and paint. As a teacher of many decades, I loved the experience of being taught. I deeply felt that my creativity and curiosity were looked after by the teacher, and it sensitized me to what it might feel like for the students I work with. Learning is vulnerable and being a student helps me remember. I also felt honest camaraderie with my classmates. We were all there searching a way to approach life differently. We were all burned out and depressed. I know this because we talked about it at length. Our class was a temporary confederation that did not last, but I don’t think it needed to last. We all learned together that we did not need to suffer in the ways that we had become accustomed to and tolerant of.

I look at art from this time with deep fondness, even though I think that I have gotten a lot better. The art I made in this class reminds me of that time in my life when I could not yet see a way out of burnout, despair, and sadness.

At the end of the class, my partner came down to the city to help me bring all my art stuff back on the train. I introduced him to the teacher and her husband on the street and we got a car back to the hotel. On the ride, I felt so overwhelmed with emotion that I cried. I cried because the class was over, and I was overcome with gratitude for the teacher and classmates who had made space for me in a way that I had not experienced in a long time. I could breathe. I cried because I realized that I had not been breathing much. They, alongside the art materials and Brooklyn in the summer, changed my entire life. I cried from a mixture of joy and sadness for what I had missed for so many decades. Being in the class reminded me of how much I had neglected myself and how I lacked community, rest, quiet, peace, and space. Space for contemplation, expression, and reflection. I had given up myself for professional success and it was not a good trade. I cried because the joy I felt was in such a sharp contrast to how I had felt for many years. I was afraid that I would never have such an experience again, because I had never had that experience before. I also cried because I worried that I would not continue to practice what I learned. I worried that work and responsibilities would edge out art, so that I would never make the time to do it again. I cried because I thought I needed to begin the mourning process for something that I was certain I would lose after only just finding it. But that is not what happened.

After I returned home and began making collages in our spare bedroom for hours and hours because I was on summer break. I listened to Jessica Pratt, Frank Ocean, Sza, Weyes Blood, Earl Sweatshirt, Armand Hammer, Duster, Broadcast, Radiohead, Alex G, and the night sounds of our neighborhood.  I listen to a lot of hip-hop but when I make art, I want to listen to quieter music. I cut and glued onto different kinds of paper feeling myself become more agile with the tools. I loved the Exacto knives and glue sticks. I began using a little bit of paint but feeling uncertain. I was not discouraged by this uncertainty because I had already done a lot of things that I initially felt uncertain about. I learned that uncertainty, like panic, could become so backgrounded that it did not stop me from doing something I was curious to try.

Toward the end of the summer, I took an abstract painting class at the Woodstock School of Art. I missed the first day, so felt a bit out of step with the other people in the class when I entered the classroom. The teacher showed us a few things that she did to get started and some of her favorite materials. Like my teacher at Pratt, she encouraged us to explore the materials, coming over and asking questions. In this class, unlike the other one, I felt a bit of panic. I was intimidated by painting and did not feel as comfortable working with palette knives and brushes. I also did not know the other people in the way that I knew the people in my other class. I did not like them seeing what I was doing. I felt uncomfortable and worried I was doing it all wrong. My last class I had gotten to know the people, and this was not like that at all. I took a deep steadying breath and tried to ignore that familiar feeling of panic and anxiety. I remembered that I was there to learn. That was all. I focused on the colors of the paint, the smells of the art room, and the shapes that emerged from the movements of my hands. I listened to the sound of the brush sliding across the canvas, pushing up against the paint, and I sighed quietly. I was learning that the panic that has characterized much of my life could be ignored. It just took practice.