Prompt: Tell a story from your life describing an experience that either demonstrates your character or helped to shape it.
The road twisted like a racetrack, and I could barely see through the trees at every corner and turn. What I hated the most was imagining a car zooming around one of the twists and not being able to see me in enough time. But I was used to the drive at this point and had yet to see a crash on my way to work. My boss was going to be mad that I was late, I knew he wouldn’t say anything; I also knew I would be doing a little extra work ostensibly because I didn’t finish all my shows the last time I was in. But I was met with a surprise. My boss told me to go talk with the art director of Daybreak Star, because he had something important to tell me. I took a short trip across the yellow lit wide hallway to his office and his door felt brittle to the knock. “Yes, please come in.” Paintings and pottery were planted in every inch of the room, my eyes were not only met with a nice smile but with color candy everywhere I looked. He started to introduce himself to me but there was so much distraction that grew from the words: his soft voice, his vocabulary, and the sense that each of the pieces in the room were also a part of his introductory words. My boss had thankfully already told me his name. “Good to meet you Jose, I’m Evan.” “Oh, yes, well, let me get straight to it, there is this expressionist, Heather Johnston, who is from Alaska is Aleut and has her artwork right upstairs if you want to check it out.” Who could possibly say no.
On our walk up to the Sacred Circle Art Gallery, where her pieces were, he told me more about the artist’s life, her father’s history with basket weaving and her journey as an artist. He also told me how he wanted me to interview her and that I would need to write out about fifteen questions for the interview surrounding her process, life and style. When we got to the gallery, he asked me what my first impressions were. I was stunted, I saw symbols of Aleut masks and eyes in her pieces but nothing different than any other painter I had seen. Out of the deepest depths of my bag of hokum I said, “she reminds me a lot of Basquiat, I see the face symbols, almost like Basquiat’s crowns in his work, I also see eyes and keylike figures. I can definitely see they have great meaning; that’s something I’ll definitely ask about for sure” Out of the two of us in the gallery, only one of us was fooled into thinking I did a good job. He looked to me like a teacher to a struggling student. He stuttered on every other word as if everything he said went through a million checks and balances before it made it to me, “When I look at art, I always find it fascinating how the artist usually tends to go back to what they experienced or saw when they were a child. For example, Heather Johnston here, was born in the eighties, when Basquiat was popular, and his art was being talked about and might’ve been shown to her. It’s not completely out of the question to talk about her young life influencing her art.” He got closer to one of the paintings and stood analyzing it for a second. He spoke like the painting was listening to everything he said.
What art school he went to did not matter because I had never been to San Fransico and wouldn’t have probably known anyways, but what it did express was his knowledge, his
The road was beautiful
Sees details in mundane things
Be specific
Use your voice (personal narrative)
Continue to write descriptive, then cut down
Answer the beginning, give description before moving on, answer questions
Do not add description after already setting scene (did I already give color to this space)
Word dumping, no word count (influences your true voice and writing process)
Answer, in your own voice
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