Blog #1 - Person who makes art statement - 2.7.18

Stories are my first and greatest love. I have been voraciously consuming stories since before I can remember (or so I’ve been told). From the moment I was born my parents whispered stories they had built together into my ear, they sang me songs whose sound alone took me on grand journeys, they read chapters upon chapters of books big and small to me every night. Whatever they were reading or watching on television would get translated the next day as stories told around the dinner table to me and my sister. I felt fed by those stories, fed and fueled. I used to think this made me a storyteller but as I write those words I realize that this title has never felt like one that truly belongs to me. I’m a storyteller as much as anyone who has lived a life and aches to share that life and be known and remembered is a storyteller. To tell my own story seems vital to my existence but it doesn’t fill me with wonder and delight the way consuming the stories of others does. It seems better to say that I am a story catcher, collector, a curator of tales. I want to gather all the stories I can and I want to share them with you, with the world, I want to share them back with the people whose stories they first were so they can see how beautiful they are. I feel very certain that there is nothing more important in the quest for human decency than simply taking a moment every now and then to listen to each other, to share our stories with one another, to acknowledge the unique importance of each of our daily ordinary lives. I hope that in my life and in my work I can facilitate that sharing.

“And though the gazelle couldn’t spell very well, like everyone else she had stories to tell”

-”Wild About Books” by Judy Sierra

“The purpose of a storyteller is not to tell you how to think, but to give you questions to think upon. Too often, we forget that.”

-”The Way of Kings” by Brandon Sanderson