Calligramme

To my future self, today is September 15th 2023, you’re 18 and in your first year away from home at university. Today you don’t know what you want to major in or what you want to do as a career, all you know is drink making, coffee, teas, mixed beverages it doesn’t matter. I hope that 20 years from now when I’m almost 40 I will know what I want to be or where I want to go. Today I’m still debating if I want to major in Criminology & Criminal Justice, New Media, Psychology, or Communications and Media with a Minor in Digital Arts and to the M.A program. Maybe I will do some combination of those or none of them. What I do know is that I am learning more here than I would working at the coffee shop back home and I get to see more than I have before. I enjoy riding the streetcar system that runs from downtown to Ybor and found a cafe that has homemade pastries, fun teas and coffees, a cozy cafe, and fun music. I saw a flower truck for the first time the other day. I was walking to the downtown station for the streetcar, station #11, and on my way saw a vintage VW truck with metal buckets of freshly grown flowers and leaves. I definitely got some eucalyptus and some wax flowers to add some more life to the dorm room. I felt like I was in some coming of age movie; sitting in a downtown cafe in Channel District with eucalyptus and wax flowers wrapped in brown paper tied with twine drinking an iced fall spice latte sitting by the window watching people walk by the window and streetcars doing their routes. Even if I don’t know what I want to do with my future, who I want to be, where I want to go, and what I want to contribute; I do know what I enjoy doing today, where I don’t want to be, and that I want to keep moving forward to see what life holds and what I will accomplish between today September 15th 2023 and then September 15th 2043, which seems like miles away but it will probably come before I know it and before I feel ready.

 Artist Statement

    This work is a combination of a letter written to my future self 20 years from now and a classic calligramme, a image of words. I created this by using a variety of techniques to warp the text into looking like a bouquet of flowers and not just a letter, such as masks, paths, and fills. I was inspired to both write the letter and draw a bouquet of flowers because of one of my days in the city. On my way to a coffee shop I would a flower truck and got these flowers. For some reason sitting in the cafe with coffee and flowers stood out to be. I wondered if 20 years from now I would still be enjoying coffee and flowers or if I would have 'grown out' of it being 38 years old. If in 20 years I would be in a similar position I am today or if some choice in that time will change my life path.

    To me this calligramme is a representation of my future, growing and changing into the person I will become despite all my worries and uncertainties of today. In a bouquet you incorporate many types of flowers and leaves of different lengths, colors, and sizes to make something beautiful. This same idea applies to life, over the span of our lifetime we experience many cultures, places, and people. All of these work to build the person we become making us complete and beautiful just like a bouquet, with flowers and leaves of what made us who we are and branches of paths we both took and missed. Looking a life like a bouquet can make a difficult time seem easier, as flowers or leaves die they fall away leaving room for another flower to grow even bigger and better. This idea of going through today for a better future helps to keep me going and always seeking to improve myself.