ERICA BRADSHAW: Creating For Oneself

"...am I creating for myself or other people? That's a big question that I haven't been able to find an answer to yet..."

On a rainy Friday morning, Erica Bradshaw came to Lions & Rabbits to sit down with Jasmine Bruce and me for a conversation about her and her art.

Erica has worked with us on many of our public arts initiatives. Starting with Windows GR last summer, she has also contributed to the Graffiti Wall on Lafayette Ave., our Storm Drains project, and our Barricades initiative.

Barricades 2021 at Grand Rapids Brewing Company

After she told us about her schooling at KVCC and KCAD, and how her experiences growing up near Kalamazoo influence her nature-themed art, she started to share some of the struggles that come with being an artist.

"...I'm trying to find a balance. As an artist, you want to have the freedom to create purely for yourself, but at times I definitely feel the pressure to do otherwise in order to have a reliable income and appeal to an audience. With social media, there seems to be these unspoken rules like, "you have to paint this popular subject matter. You have to post about it at this time. You have to produce this much artwork.' When really it shouldn't be about that."

I asked her about her motivations at the beginning of her creative process, and what thoughts go through her head regarding who she is creating for.

"Usually, my pieces start with more of a loose or natural free-flowing movement, where I'm just having fun like a child scribbling. I love the textures and patterns that I can find out in nature because I feel that I can re-create them without thinking about it at all. Then within that abstract, I see certain shapes that remind me of an animal or something else out in nature... and I use different media that I feel would progress the piece.

"My favorite pieces have started that way, where there's not really a plan. I'm doing it for myself - finding a space to create that doesn't have any pressure. I don't know what the outcome is going to be, but I'm just trusting the process, and that's really helpful for me because I find that my mind completely turns off, like it's just automatic, and there's nowhere else in my life that I do that, so it's really relaxing to have an outlet like that."

Jasmine asks, "I feel like sometimes that authenticity can get lost in commissioned work and taking requests. Do you do a lot of commissioned projects?"

"I'm learning to choose commissioned work that excites me," Erica responds. "I find that a lot of commission work comes with the approach of 'Oh, you're an artist, that means you can do anything.' I think a lot of people misunderstand that an artist is creating a certain way for a reason that is near and dear to their heart. To ask them to do something different than their style can be almost hurtful. It's like asking them to change who they are. And it's tempting to do that for them, but I have been trying to find peace with saying no - unless somebody truly already admires my work and wants it to be coming from my heart."

She told us about the artist markets she participates in and how validating it is to see people's faces light up when they connect with her work.

"Who tends to like your artwork the most?" I ask.

"I definitely think that right now, it leans more toward younger inquisitive minds, but I don't want to constrict it to just younger people. People that are curious and interested in learning. People that are caring and thoughtful about nature and animals, and enjoy the whimsical aspects of it. The people that feel that childish wonder and are not scared of that."

She described the many acres of field land that she grew up on as "basically just a big playground." Instead of staying inside watching TV, she'd explore the natural world that surrounded her.

"That's a huge inspiration of mine, and my work is constantly relating back to childhood and that kind of wonder and curiosity that nature brings. I've always just felt so comfortable in nature. That's where I go to escape."

As part of the Gordon Art Fellowship grant for the Pierce Cedar Creek Institute for Environmental Education in Hastings, she wrote and self-published a children's book called "Their Home, Our Landfill."

"That was like the first big thing that I committed to. I came up with a proposal for this based on the environment at the nature preserve that I was going to be staying on… And after Pierce Cedar Creek, I started realizing that there's funding out there for art."

We asked if she had any advice for other artists who are struggling with finding that balance between creating for themselves and creating for other people.

"I think the biggest thing is being able to trust yourself inherently as an artist. Somewhere in there, you know that this is meant for you. You know you have the skills to do it. I think just being able to take that deep breath and know that whatever happens in this piece, I'm gonna make it work. No matter what challenges it throws at you, you can reroute because you have the skills to do that."

Jasmine adds, "That's so monumental, taking that lesson and then applying that to everything else in your life. If I can learn to trust myself in my practice, then I can do that anywhere else, right?"

"And that's ultimately my goal. I want to find that in every aspect of my life... If I can get to a point where I trust myself enough to apply that to everything else, that's when I, or anybody, would be flourishing."

"I feel that," Jasmine agrees, "It seems like again and again that it's about trusting, trusting, trusting - being able to just trust that what you're doing is what you should be doing and not letting other people scare you off that track. I know that's one of the biggest challenges I face too: 'Is this a real thing that I can do?'"

"And is it gonna be sustainable?" Erica wonders, "Because every day is different too, which makes it feel like, 'what's coming tomorrow?' which is the exciting part, but also the scary part... I don't want to let myself down."

It's not easy to succeed as an artist, so what motivates her to keep pushing forward? Why do we choose this career path if it's so uncertain and so challenging?

"I think that being in a community is the biggest thing, wherever you can find it. For me, that community came from going to art school and just realizing that there's a world out there that's bigger, and that's essentially what led me to Lions & Rabbits... I'm constantly looking for people to relate to and know that it's not just me going through this crazy time in life."

She also emphasized, "I've been inspired by everybody else's wins. That keeps me going too. I guess that's the good part of community and social media. I feel like I get to celebrate other people's accomplishments too and know that success is out there."

Jasmine asked her to elaborate on some of the group projects she has worked on with Lions & Rabbits, and what those experiences were like with our community.

Erica responded, "I love the aspect of the graffiti wall, for example, because you meet so many artists that you wouldn't have met otherwise, and it's a collaboration. Being an artist is a collaboration. You can't create inside a vacuum. Bouncing ideas off people, and hearing other people's stories, and learning from other people is huge."

In the early summer of 2020, when the windows of so many storefronts downtown were broken and boarded up, Jasmine helped organize a big team of local Grand Rapids artists in an effort to continue pushing for social change by painting inspiring images and messages on those plywood boards.

Erica reminisced about her involvement, "One of the things I'll remember most since doing the Windows GR project, within everything going on during that, I feel like it could have been such a heavy atmosphere, but coming to that project and meeting so many other artists, and just the energy - I don't know how to explain that to anybody that wasn't there. Showing up to paint, there was something going on in the air.

"There really was, yeah!" insists Jasmine.

"That was so exciting for me to feel," continued Erica, "realizing that artists are resilient and they're there for each other, and I just genuinely love that. I don't know what I'd do if I wasn't lucky enough to be a part of it and get to know those other artists."

With a big smile, Jasmine recalled, "On those days, it was so magical..."

"It felt a little weird to think of it that way, because everybody was hurting," Erica agrees.

Jasmine explained, "It felt like we should be sad or something like that, but instead it felt powerful in the way that we could come together, talk to each other, share through our artwork, and shift that energy from the riots and all that pain into something positive, like we were little superheroes."

"With everything that artists are hit with every day, I feel that we're meant to take a situation and see it in a different light," Erica notes. "We carry a lot on our shoulders. We are trying to take in and process everything, and react to it... Why do we thrive on that?"

I asked her about other artwork she has created - what other ways she has used her creativity to help someone. She told us the story about a mixed-media piece she created for the Lansing Art Path that was dedicated to her great-grandmother.

"She passed away when I was 12, and I didn't know her really well. She was a painter. She retired and chose to do painting, like she just flipped her life upside down to start doing that. That's super inspiring to me that she did that. I inherited all her art supplies and the slide photographs she took - thousands of them.

"I just felt there was something so special about them because they were the little 'captured moments' - that's what I called the piece - that she found in nature and for one reason or another took a photo to save it.

"My proposal was that, somehow, someway, I would collage all of these slides together and frame them, and do a memorial piece for my great-grandmother that, when the sun shines through the slides, all of them light up and you can see all the little pieces. So I did this piece along the Lansing River Valley Trail called "Captured Moments." We sandwiched these slides between plexiglass, and then I created a tree motif with a fawn looking up at the tree that surrounds all these slides.

"Most of them were reference photos for her paintings, so a lot of them you can look at, and there are all these little notes on them, and you can match them up to some of her paintings... A lot of them would be marked on the slide holder like, 'deer, too dark' or 'deer, too blurry.' She was always trying to capture pictures of deer, but she could never get it in the right instance.

"So I painted a deer with a tree that surrounds it, like finally giving her that clear image of a deer. It was really cool and really rewarding, and it was awesome to actually see it in the sunlight and see all of her memories shining through."

Artists are constantly searching for ways to balance their need for self-expression with the desire to create something meaningful for others. Erica's stories demonstrate the powerful impact that art can have when it connects the creator's heart to someone else's.

“Connecting with others is the most important part of being an artist for me - whether that is directly through artwork, shared experience, or lifting each other up. When I create artwork for myself, I hope to find others that somehow feel as if that artwork was made especially for them. When that happens, I've gained a new friend, and that ultimately feels like the balance I'm looking for.”

———

Check out Erica’s website  https://todrawattention.com/  to find out more. She has original artwork, prints, stickers, handprinted clothing, books, cards, and more for sale there.