Failure: That's How I Roll and He Art

My assignment was to capture the nature of failure. I immediately came to think of failure as experienced through Yoga. In Yoga we see failure as an opportunity to get back up. Failure is an ever present possibility and experience shared by every human being but can really only be considered a "failure" if one does not learn from their experience. The universe conspires our successes and will throw us insurmountable challenges we may not be able to meet but it is the trial that defines us and more importantly how we recover from our failures. In yoga we value process over product and we even practice falling out of postures, as shown in my etching of myself rolling out of handstand, so that we can fail safe and fail better. We learn to see our failures as success thus have no fear failure as your fear will surely be your failure. Biochemically we react to failure very similarly to how we react to the fear of death, by following through and not submitting to defeat we biochemically re map and re pattern our brains plasticity and increase our potential to be a greater human being. Practice detachment of outcome, detach of your errors and embrace your practice, cherish your failures as the edge of success.

In a continuation of exploring the nature of failure I chose to experiment with the nature of love. My relationships were going nowhere but sour and recognizing this I decided to take a collage I had made with a pair of flamingos bumpin' heads thus making a heart shape and then take carbon copy paper and make a tracing of the birds. I would etch one bird and my friend the other and than we tore the birds apart and had the tastiest, juiciest, sweetest, last tiger kiss of our relationship to seal the separation. I thus call the piece He art because through breaking a heart we make art. The moment was as truly beautiful as liberating, I encourage you, no I insist that you treat yourself to treat the next kiss with your love as if it is your last, because that person just might not be there tomorrow.


Works made with Carbon on Paper. $15
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