In the eyes of Norm S., the head of the ceramic department, the informal crit with the only woman sculpture TA was a total failure since I did not stop making the sexually ambiguous pieces that repulsed him. He tried one last time, asking a guest ceramic sculptor to give me my final crit before the final push into practice teaching. The critic’s work, which consisted of large stoneware slabs wrapped, slashed, and splashed with whitish liquid clay slip, were labeled as protests of the Viet Nam War being fought at the time. (I never did register his name and cannot find anything like my memory of his work anywhere, so he shall remain nameless.) To give Norm credit, he recognized my work as sculpture and sensed that it was political in some way. The critic did not look at the work and run out of the room like Norm did, but he was as non-verbal. After silently looking at my collected recent work, he finally asked one question, “If they are ‘earth mothers’ why are they white?” I said, “I do not know.” That was it. The Senior Crit at one of the best art schools in the country was over. Not another word was spoken. He left the room. But I was fine. I love questions.
A few weeks later I was looking for a book at a library. Scanning the stacks, the words “The White Goddess” along the spine of a book shouted out to me. White Goddess? What’s that? Maybe it will explain why my sculptures worked best in heavily patterned white and black? I pulled it out. It was by the British poet Robert Graves, writing about his muse, the Celtic moon goddess. In it he referred to all kinds of fanciful ideas about ancient goddesses and Neolithic matriarchal societies as imagined by a bunch of 19th century white European male romantic intellectuals, but it stirred my intuition that the sculptures I made were inspired by the moon, call it goddess if you must. Graves gave me the bare beginning of words to talk about my own artistic imagination – my muse if you must. I started a several year project of reading as many of the books in the bibliography that I could find. Words, I was eager for words to speak about what I knew. I will be forever grateful for that simple question asked by that nameless critic so long ago. That question, “Why are they white?” drives me still. Now I wonder why the critic and the poet stressed the word ‘white’ even when speaking of the moon which appears to us as waxing and waning between black and white, or my sculptures which were as black as they were white. I did not have words like ‘white privilage’ then, but now I do. Were we taught by our white privilage to see white and to not see black? I am still looking for words to speak about what I know.
Have you ever struggled to find the words to speak about what is most important to you? Have you found communicating in other ways easier, such as through music, images, rituals, or dance? Have you had teachers, mentors, friends who helped you find your voice? Have other art forms such as poetry, myths, novels, theater, or opera helped you articulate what is closest to your heart? What surprises have you discovered about your inner life along the way? What surprises have you discovered about the culture which formed you?