By me

About me

By Lola Bennett

Artist is such a broad term. It includes so many things, so many different crafts,

so many different techniques, so many forms. And yet I can't help but find myself

thinking an artist is someone who creates some subjective abstract painting displayed on

a white wall with a lovely varnished wooden bench across from it where you sit and

ponder it for hours but still never quite place your finger on what it means. Since I was

really young I was told I was an artist, and like most little kids I was very creative and I

honed this creativity as I grew up, rejecting sports and everything else offered to me. I

loved making things out of paper and reusing items, and, at the time, I was living in

Jersey where everyone had new things all the time. I've always needed to make tangible

beautiful things and be surrounded by them. Ive tinkered and built as long as I can

remember, whether this was making jewelry, sewing, working with clay or anything else I

could think up. I could never draw or paint nicely and despised still lives with my whole

being. I needed to create products that meant something and that could be held and

shown in places other than walls or behind glass. My power struggle between sticking to

old art form and branching out to things far out of my comfortable has caught up to me

the past two years though. I've been a avid sewer and have used a sewing machine since I

was 14. Before that I would even hand sew my clothes but now I find myself moving into

poetry, filmmaking, and other mediums wavering from the path I have always seen my

set future in. I'm not quite sure what to call myself (artist?,writer?poet?) In each phase of
my life my urge to create has followed me for some reason or another and given me

something I needed then I couldn't find anywhere else. I realize now the bond I feel

between objects and memories and how making them is a way for me to associate more

than just a visual to memories and this is why I create art.

The very first memory I have of creating is sculpting little bits of food for my dolls

out of polymer clay. My parents, both chefs, were very good at it and would sit with me

for hours in the kitchen as I decorated very lopsided cakes and misshapen bowls. I was

always very frustrated and confused why I wasn't as good as they were at it. I have never

really recognized my age, I didn't think it was important or worth noting to the effects of

my abilities to create. I would keep these clay food in a little pink tin or on a shelf, much

like I did with my nail polish in middle school. I might sound terribly OCD or a bit like a

hoarder but everything then and now has a home in my home and I can't really settle

until things are put there. Thinking back to these memories I think of the garden in our

backyard, a little plastic flat pink car, nail polish and maturity. I would have been

younger than five here but it feels like even then I need how important these feelings

were to me.

A quick review of my childhood: I would always draw very happy characters

called FeFos who each had special powers like water, fire, ice, etc. I did this a lot. I would

do collective doodles of things that went together and had characters with personalities

that almost fit together like little families. In life, I would also look for this, a perfect

friend group where I would fit in and have a certain role and place. Being me, meaning

very odd, this didn't happen and I don't think I minded after awhile-- I just liked to
doodle. I was also a big fan of collage and mixing patterns and colors. I used collage

while spending time with my grandmother, and from this, I started to idolize her and

wanted to have the power to feel above everything like she did, she was just living her life

with no one's influence directing it but her own. I would ask her as many things as I

could and would always let her take the lead when we were collaging together, I rarely

saw her and tso this was a big thing for me. It made me feel very safe to be and make art

with someone who wasn't concerned about anything but that moment. She wasn't

thinking about anyones opinion on the piece we were making or the way she was acting

and having fun with me, it was just a moment for her, between the two of us for know

one else. I would try to be like her in this way but I probably came off a bit snobby for an

8-year old! She was the kind of idol I needed then poised, put together, wise and creative,

everything I was struggling or was not.

Around age ten or twelve, I am still the same: closed off with my room and

thoughts, still playing with toys, creating elaborate scenes for them that made it barely

livable for me without running into a paper mache castle or bags off overflowing

patterned paper. (Example: there was a solid week where I had taped string from the

ceiling to the floor with little boxes attached like little elevators.) And, my jewelry

making! I would make hundreds of earrings out of every bead I owned and make rings

out of wire or any material I could get my hands on. Pliers were my best friend and as I

would sit on my bed (binging on Doctor Who, of course, because who needs nature) and

twist and coil wire into loops for hours, selecting bead from cubes in fishing bait boxes.

No one around me really made things in Jersey so I kept it to myself. I participated in a

couple craft shows and didn't have much luck. Just like the pressure to be an artist was
on so was it to find a way to make money from it. I was told you can't just make

thousands of things and do nothing with them; you have to make a profit; you have to get

your work out there. And a part of me wanted to but a bigger part just wanted to be left

alone doing my thing and eventually again they did. A lot of this pressure came from my

parents and friends and family and I feel I little silly saying this now but then It was true

I felt I had an audience and I didn't want to disappoint. People talking about my little

ribbon handbags or feather earrings felt like an awful lot of weight when I thought it was

just fun to create.

When we moved to Vermont, I was 13 and still sewing. I found an awesome

mentor named Lisa who totally hand held me through every single step. The first thing I

think I made with her was a little navy polka dot shift dress that I haven't worn to this

day! Through the period of the next two years, I was fascinated with the sixties and the

shortness of everything. I became pattern crazy and bought a hundred vintage patterns,

all of which I probably only used twenty. I made dresses out of what I describe as tea

towel prints (pictures of very geometric bees or fruits in neon colors) on stiff cotton

fabric that were extremely extremely short. This fascination of what the cool girl would

wear in a cooler city with a cooler life than mine was the ultimate unrealistic goal.

The techniques I was learning were imprinted on me and I saw all of them in

clothes around me, and I didn't realize the power of this knowledge-- that I could take

apart 90% of the outfits I saw in a room and put them back together perfectly. Or

another thought I had was, and maybe this was just a style opinion, if that silly ruffle was

taken out or a pleat on the front of a shirt was added the whole look could be elevated.
The piece could be its own. Once you buy or obtain a piece of clothing, almost just like art

or poetry it's up for interpretation once you have viewed it or make your opinion on it.

It's yours and you can think whatever you want about it. A shirt made for a casual outfit

could be flared up by being tucked into very tight disco pants with a sun hat or matched

with a mini skirt and dangling beads much longer than it. There's a huge difference

between having A style and having style. I would never wear these little mini dresses

either; I didn't dare to. Maybe I was at the point where I cared about what others thought

or maybe I wasn't ready to try to be that cool girl yet. It didn't matter though because the

things I did wear out in public were often complicated so I'm not sure what I was really

afraid of. Clothes and sewing my own clothes, even if I did not wear them, was this

outlet to a fantasy I didn't have the courage to take the plunge into. Staring back at my

my closet, my mini dresses were encouraging me and inspiring me silently and I would

sit in front of my closet really deeply looking at them, knowing they were something from

a future self showing me a possibility I wasn't quite sure of yet. I needed this hope, real

or fake.

I feel that now with my poetry. Yes thank you for the compliment on the thing I

did for myself, that now you have taken and twisted in your own brain, that I had no

intention for you then looking about it then making an opinion on me or the kind of work

I make. That's why I think people compliment others work sometimes. If they don't

like/understand it they fear you might know somehow and have to make up for it quickly

because they fear you either care deeply about it or have spent a lot of time working on

whatever it is. Some people are afraid of their opinions and thoughts and their effect on

the world but they don't really do anything unless you express them somehow.
 Last year I found myself at a stand still in my projects. Keep reading and writing

about fashion designers that this study has made you now hate or come off as a flake and

change studies to something no one expected. I hate coming off as a flake. And in the end

I did change what I was doing. I went on to do a poetry a day study, where I would write

every day and at the end of the semester make a poetry book. A lot of my work then was

inspired and even stylistically based off of Milk and Honey by Rupi Kaur. My poems

were all very short and to the point but involved a lot of sensory detail that I use still. I

needed this little time to feel safe and make simple sentences because I was honestly just

scared of the interpretation of others. Not that I was throwing it in peoples faces or

writing on the walls for all to see but irrationally I feared someone picking up and

reading my work and not understanding it and then having to undermine it for their sake

But that's just because I was at a very insecure part in my life that thankfully only lasted

for a few months. Even my poetry notebooks were very neat and readable for once, which

was a good habit but only for show. I remember writing one poem about the evilness of

older boys and how I thought I was making a big statement of sorts. I even put it in the

art show thinking it would do something. Of course, it didn't. It was too long and nothing

and a silent inner part of me vowed to never write something silly like that again. The

anger I felt within me was real but writing about it directly did nothing for myself. When

I was at the Governor's Institute, I took a poetry class that completely opened me up and

broke me out of my format of 4-lined poems that were not very memorable. I was writing

not-very-good poems but twisting, skipping, jumping poetry with visuals I thought were

very scary and loud because being loud was how you got heard. The act of performing

poetry was good, too, and I participated a little bit in slam but I preferred decorating
walls or objects with my poems.

This year, I think my writing has changed a lot. I had tamed myself a bit from

summer and wasn't trying to prove what I was before, that I had nothing to prove! I had

wanted to show people my work was as loud as me and how I presented myself but now I

see it's a way to show the part of myself that isn't. I am finding ways to show myself

mostly how to put my thoughts to paper and I try to do this by being very open with

myself and I what I need to say. One of my favorite pieces of writing this year was the

poem set I created titled The Hard Feeling in my Lungs, which was a series of nine

poems that ranged in size and are about different feeling or views I had and the way they

manifested and looked in my brain. That's the point of my writing now, not to explain to

anyone else whats going on in my head but for myself. I am so scattered and sometimes

upset why I can't see things as things but instead as feelings or emotions I have towards

them in some way. Just like creating my own clothes is a way to express my style and

who I want to be, writing is a way for me to understand my thoughts and feelings and put

them together. Recently, I write a sentence or two with letters in sets of 2 or 3 vertically

stacked. I still write in normal format obviously but these column poems have been my

main focus and creative outlet. They are usually paired with little drawings and I think

my way of writing them reminds me of minimalist tattoos I really enjoy. It takes a bit of

time to read these poems. It's not the kind of thing you can walk by and understand by

one glance. I've been thinking a bit and I'm a little upset by the fake things I read all the

time in passing, mostly not very smart or important things(Ex Facebook news and click

bait articles). I want people or even myself to have a choice to take the time and read my

work. Im not saying the work is important or smart but it is something weird when I

myself have to stop running around to piece together a sentence for a minute and then
once I have spent a moment dissecting it it strings together like a normal sentence.

Reading it requires me to slow down which is odd for me because I do everything very

fast pace and it's even odder for me to have to take time to read my work.I like this

though about the how long it takes the poem to be put together and read and made, like

it's coming full circle back to its birth.

I've always felt this pressure of making what I think of as traditional art.

(Paintings, drawings, etc. You know the drill.) And because of this I've never considered

what I do to be art. To me art is made with the intention of being art and then viewed as

such. It's in a gallery or displayed in an obvious way with the creators signature

somewhere and you can always tell what it it. Making a bag out of old ties or hair clips

out of found paper wasn't art, it had no meaning or statement or intention of being seen

as art, it was just I think I enjoyed doing. And I still sometimes don't think what I make

today is art either. It's almost like my thesis of art is the setting out and intention to

make art, whereas I feel just the urge to create something because it will look cool or the

materials have a greater use. The need to create does not necessarily mean make art.

Possessing the created thing is important to me. My room, since I was little, has always

been covered in my creations and I loved so preciously placing everything in its little

spot. Just like how I piece together an outfit and contents of my bag, I do this with every

object I own. I consider the objects relationship to the space and things by it. On a

window in my room I have funny soda bottles lined up together with flowers and felt

lollipops in them. Colors never clash or match too closely, and the clearest bottles are in

the middle so sunlight can shine through them. My love of things probably comes from

the fact I get a feeling from each one. This feeling is not usually an emotion but a sort of
sense mixed with a memory. When I look at a tapestry in my room, I feel a sense of

rebellion and isolation associated with a feeling of dark matter. (Im wondering now why

I have them up!) At my crystals, I am reminded of my old house and my dad and also

now, recently, the smell of rain. When I haven't seen something in a while or am

reminded of one of these feelings, I usually know exactly what object is associated with it

and the time it was most important to me. Material things and their effect on my brain is

like a very special version of a sketchbook: it gets dusty and lost sometimes but you can

always find it and recall where each picture is from.

A future project of feeling I'm want to make is something out of cigarette cartons

and wild flowers. What it looks like in my head is a mobile with a very simple structure, a

hoop about the circumference of a beach ball with five strings attached from the top

where they met creating a canopy, making these pieces a bit shorter so it was more stout.

The string I imagine would be light brown twin and the hoop wood very natural looking

but not too stick like and natural, no bark. I would string the Marlboros with the gold

packaging(Lites?) up the loose dangling string until it met the hoop and couldn't go up

any father five times and have one also strung on the other side of the hoop meeting at

the hoop like the other one, fives times again (Ten cartons on total). On the remainder of

the exposed string I would braid long strands of grass together tightly around it and then

braid over that loser in plants with small flowers like blue forget- me-nots and

buttercups. These flowers remind me deeply of my childhood and the grass and concrete

but they are just the second layer of flowers, there is two more to go so they are covered

and just foundation for the rest to rely on. The next two flowers woven in a bit tighter

then the second ones are, making the ones underneath bugle a little. These ones would
be bleeding hearts and snow pea, both also from my childhood. The third layer woven in

more randomly and loosely. The flowers themselves are much bigger being shasta daisies

and creeping daisies two I am not very familiar with at all. I would also do this around

the exposed part of the hoop. The connection between myself and this piece is the

memoires I have of last summer. Imaging this piece in my mind it reminds me of riding

in a car with the windows rolled down and looking at vermont's green hills and

mountains. The actual emotions I associate with this pieces are fearlessness and pure

happiness and the feeling I feel physically is like I'm surrounded by cool air. The reason I

would choose to use these materials are because I love flowers that grow wild and they

have strong connections to my childhood and the cigarette cartoons because they remind

me of my cliched teenage rebellion. I imagine it being a mobile because they are symbol

of light and joy to me and they are like a protective cap over a room. The overall feeling I

get from imagining the making and final product of this piece a cool breeze, the scent of

sweet earth and freedom.