Seeking meaning
Gary's Story
“Art saved me when nothing else could”
I read that statement on an art post somewhere on the internet “Art saved me when nothing else could”. It’s so appropriate and makes me tear up a bit because it hits at the heart of my own journey so far.
This all started by accident. That is a reoccurring theme in my life. So much so that Becky (my spouse) says that I should trademark “Awesome by accident” as my tagline.
I was struggling. I quit my job in May of 2023 to do something else – anything really. I had dreams of designing and building overlanding trailers, but post pandemic, it was still hard to get even basic materials I needed and the only shop space I could afford was big enough for the tools OR a trailer, but not both.
I had bought a bunch of woodworking tools including a CNC router to help me make cabinets and trailer parts. I didn’t plan well and I didn’t really understand what I was getting myself into at the time.
Long story short, I got really depressed and anhedonia set in. I was looking for some kind of meaning and purpose. To just feel something (anything really) and in my search I came across an art challenge. It was to make a piece of art every week, one for every letter in the alphabet. The rules were simple, make a themed piece of art and post it to the internet for all of the participants to see.
I chose to make a series of little wooden robot automatons. My theme was a little robot trying to find enlightenment. I made a little robot flying a wooden kite as my test piece before the challenge began. That piece ended up selling at a Saturday Market event that Becky (my spouse) talked me into signing up for. It reassured me that I had picked a good meduim.
As I made each piece in the robot enlightenment series and posted it to the internet, I gained a small following of incredibly kind and encouraging people. Over the course of a couple of months, my feelings started to come back. I started to feel like I had some purpose and meaning in my life again.
The requests started coming for me to make some of the robots to sell. I made small batches of them at first. 2 or 3 of them at a time, and they would sell out as fast as I could make them.
At one point I was making 12 of each new design every other week, but I couldn’t keep up the pace. I was falling farther behind on the challenge and eventually had to take a break from making robots.
The challenge led to this small business. It’s still a struggle to find the balance between what I want to do and what I need to do to pay my rent. I’ve been slowly building up the knowledge and skills to make this a self supporting business, but it’s been a real challenge in this current uncertain environment.
I still have the last 4 pieces in the robot series to finish. It’s been oddly difficult to finish the series for some reason. I think I’m afraid of letting it go – it’s been a part of my life for a couple of years now.
I dream of building a community of kinetic artists & makers here locally, so we can play and learn together. I’ve been teaching a few classes to try to get that rolling. I also host a “Crafternoon” get together every Sunday afternoon where we just bring whatever we’re working on and share some time together. It’s become the highlight of my week.
Lately I have been wanting to push my skills, so I have been working on larger and more elaborate pieces. I’m hoping that maybe it will open some doors in the future.