They Said Engineers Don’t Give Birth to Artists. They Were Wrong.
Becoming your own person is never a frivolity
“We decided yours should be first,” the curator tells me. “We are all in love with it.”
The opening of the Fort Lauderdale Museum of Art Academy alumni exhibition is just beginning when I arrive, panting after finally finding a parking spot some five blocks away. My oil on canvas, a dream-like piece, occupies the prime entrance spot. In it: two Earths, seemingly on a collision course with one another, and a red ladder with street lanterns piercing the dark blue sky raised above them. One Earth is lit up and playful, a cord stretching to power the lanterns. The other is dry, repressed, and illuminated only by a dim lamp hanging off the ladder.
“What do you think this means?” someone in the crowd asks their companion.
Six months ago, the Intracoastal Waterway and the Atlantic Ocean passed my window frame as I stared at my laptop screen and lingered over the pay button. Ten weeks and $350. I could spare the time but the money kept me thinking.
The Fort Lauderdale Art Academy bulletin had been sitting on my desk for five weeks. I’d browsed the website enough times for my computer to fill in the destination the moment I typed the first letter into the address…
