This was a huge learning point for me. We had to bring something we collected and turn it into an art piece. I collect lanyards. I finished a first draft and everyone looked at me like, “Yeah I guess so.” I was baffled. I completed my drawing. “Praise me!” The five year old in me cried out. I looked over everyone’s faces again and again. “What wasn’t I doing?” I wondered. They had me add those lines you see behind the lanyards in the drawing but everyone still seemed I was a lost sheep, completely missing the point. I was so confused. I read the face of my gentle teacher who was often a great inspiration. “What was i missing?” I knew I’d get it. Eventually, after staring at her for a few minutes calculating everything I knew and thought I knew, it clicked. Art isn’t just putting down things on paper. Art is when you make something that is more than the sum of all its parts. As I tell people now, “It’s not art unless you put your balls (or back, I like to say balls to be a tiny bit crude) into it.” Ohhhh...” the younger students will chime in quickly now. Understanding fully. You’ll see that all my future work has a lot more of a backbone to it. That I try to bring things to life a lot more.