The Artist as a Young Woman

Artwork and writing: courtesy of Emily Finney

Poems on poems on poems, with a few stories of magical realism tossed in between. That’s how it started. Little books of poetry. One-off odes and amateur performances for the grandparents. Haikus left on pillows and in Mother’s Day cards. There was even a play that earned recognition as a finalist by the traveling troupe that hosted a competition for such things at my elementary school. In my mind, however, these little victories didn’t make me a creative child. I don’t believe that I even thought of myself as a writer. These were just little whirrs of poetic activity that, while self-initiated, were not much different than my other school projects and assignments. A little extracurricular wordsmithery was nothing to write home about.

An artist, you see, was quite a specific image in my head. She even had a name, and existed outside of my head. It seemed as though as soon as my older sister Rachel was able to do anything, she was able to draw. And she drew well, by anyone’s standards. We sat in a park with my father one summer as Rachel drew a tree, and when he praised her rendering, she shrugged off the compliment. This was as innate as walking for her, a practiced but instinctual skill that certainly didn’t merit praise anymore. Our dad took the paper into his own hands and drew hesitant, scraggly boughs and a trunk that failed to capture any of the nuances of the wooden mass that stood in front of us, filtering the afternoon sunlight. He returned the paper and pencil to the artist’s hands and said, “Rachel, that is the best tree I can draw.” She looked at him in disbelief. But he insisted, and I knew it was the truth. She was different— one of only two people on either side of our family with a talent for drawing.

That was rather the way of things as we grew up, endured life’s hills and valleys, and edged closer to high school graduation. I took creative writing classes and came to embrace thinking of myself as a writer based on the attention my personal essays and poems received from teachers and fellow students. I had always enjoyed art class and doodled as much as I took notes in class, but I only took one art class before graduating. I was better than most, maybe, but was never a member of the inner circle that Rachel would have occupied had she been in class with me— the kids who clearly had an off-the-charts gift that made people’s jaws drop and eyes pop like they’d been scalded by hot oil. Therefore, in my mind, I was not an artist.

As is so often the case, everything changed in college. The awakening didn’t happen overnight, but bloomed in slow motion. Almost everyone at my tiny liberal arts school seemed to be creative in some way; even the Econ and Poli Sci majors had little artistic outbursts to entertain friends and soothe their own souls— photography pursuits and music production and creatures made from blue painter’s tape that climbed the 19th century dorm room walls. Then there were the bleeding heart creatives who wholly and exclusively inhabited an enchanted (or tortured, by the same token) headspace. I stayed up until the wee hours with those completing ambitious projects for the yearlong foundational course, Drawing 101. In fact, my campus job one semester was being a model for different sections of that class. The money was decent, but getting to see yourself brought to life by 20 different pairs of eyes and hands was a reward all its own.

I wrote poems for my close friends, and began to draw with them, magical loops of vibrant Prismacolor that formed nothing you could name, but something you could feel. Poetry without words. It had honestly never occurred to me that creating surrealist and abstract work could be so fulfilling. This wasn’t the kind of art that Rachel respected or created. I’d grown up accustomed to her pastel and charcoal drawings that looked like photographs, and yet, I loved these unrendered pieces that I collaborated on with friends. I bought a sketchbook, and was gifted markers and specialty pens from friends that loved my drawings. Soon, I became the one encouraging people to leave their marks on my sketchbook even if they insisted that they didn’t or couldn’t draw. I ordered a thick roll of white butcher paper and covered one of my dorm room’s walls with it, inviting everyone who entered the room to leave their mark. This challenge was always accepted with delight, and I changed the paper multiple times throughout that year as the canvas reliably filled up with the scrawl and handwriting and quotations of dozens of friends who blessed my life during that time.

During senior year, I took on the role of Set Designer on a whim when two of my friends were putting on a surrealist show on campus. I reminded them that though I’d acted in and teched shows in high school, I had never designed a set before. But they had every confidence in me because they knew, they said, that I was very creative. On opening night, an electric crowd sat under clouds of canvas cascading across the ceiling, punctuated every so often by suspended translucent plastic balls. The stage was lush and Hawaiian in a pointedly false way, producing the distinct feeling of having been transported into a terrarium (the play was based on Naomi Iizuka’s novel, Aloha, Say the Pretty Girls: A Comedy). That night, the co-directors sat behind someone in the audience who murmured to his neighbor, “Whoever designed the set is a genius.” I glowed upon hearing this (and still do).

I never took a single art class during college, which some part of me regrets, but my experiences outside of class instilled in me a quiet confidence that I was an artist who could bring my own special magic to any medium I touched. I entered the real world aiming for a PhD in clinical psychology and landed in Berkeley’s Emotion & Emotion Regulation lab, but it didn’t stick. It wasn’t enough to color inside the lines all day and then let the hair of my imagination down at night. I wanted my life to be such that I could walk hand-in-hand with my imagination, not keep it tied down except for a couple pre-bedtime hours when I would attempt to stretch it back out and shake free. My creativity resisted such domestication, although other artists and writers have had more success (Stephen King comes to mind). 

I went from the lab to writing copy and doing very basic styling for a fashion tech start-up in San Francisco. That led to working for the Styling team of a Los Angeles-based denim company. There I learned the elements of laying out catalogues, styling both editorial and mass looks, and coordinating shoots in studio and on location. I also gained more exposure to the Adobe Suite (Photoshop, InDesign, and LightRoom). With more digital marketing experience came considerations for how creative and styling choices would translate to social media (while social certainly existed when I was in college, my friends seemed to be part of a lost time that eschewed such hyper connectedness— we were all quite analog). During this time, I also got to meet all the wonderful creatives that inhabit photo and film sets— make-up artists, photographers, videographers, hair stylists, models, gaffers, and so many more. It’s quite like I imagine the circus to be. I felt so much more at home than I had in the lab. College hadn’t been a four-year anomaly—  my experiences there had actually heralded the free-flowing life that I needed to be happy. I never felt (and still don’t) that I needed to be the master of any single medium, like a photographer or a stylist. Instead, I wanted to apply my eye and creative thinking to a broad range of projects, mediums, and challenges. Breadth and big picture ideas have always attracted me over depth and details. I know my strengths.

So almost six years out of college, where have I landed? I now work on the marketing side of a Los Angeles-based creative collective and strategic advisory called Brand Knew. Let me translate: We have teams for design, development, marketing, video production, and paid media that collectively work to brand, promote, and grow businesses from sports leagues and NPOs to TV shows and pretzel companies. This work doesn’t often take me on set, but it does require and reward creativity on a daily basis. I was at work this past Thursday night until almost 10 PM coming up with names for a fledgling candle business and combing the Instagrams and websites of the competition. I’m also currently fleshing out the concept for an Artist Series that would leverage the platform of a global brain health non-profit to showcase the work of artists informed by mental health experiences and conditions. At the same time, I’m working with the design team to modify the brand identity of that non-profit. In other words, which color palette, fonts, shapes, and experiences communicate to a user that this company is a leader in the space, but that they are also a friend that can inspire hope for the millions of people around the world affected by the brain health and mental health crisis? Can this mission be encapsulated into five to seven words that will grow with the brand over the next five, ten, or twenty years? How can we translate a complicated program for youth with early signs of schizophrenia into a digestible Instagram Highlight?

When I’m not tackling branding and marketing conundrums in the conference room, I’m in the classroom working towards a Design Communications certificate at UCLA. I’ve learned a massive amount on the job, but since I never studied design in college, I’ve enjoyed picking up some of the foundational graphic design skills and history that I missed. So my nights are often spent preparing branding presentations, designing catalogues, and learning about typography. I also still draw, paint, write, and work on other personal projects, although I have to pick and choose which ones I want to push forward in the short-term since my plate is usually between 90 and 110% full. 

It’s worth noting that Rachel herself is toeing this same line between living an artist’s life and working in a more traditional setting. Her chosen medium has become wildlife photography, and she works seasonal jobs in national parks that afford her the opportunity to live among the flora and fauna she seeks to capture. This year, her work was the big winner in Mt. Rainier’s annual photo contest, and some of her photographs are up for awards from a couple national magazines. When I show friends and colleagues those photos, they still earn that same jaw drop that her high school drawings did back in the day. There’s no doubt that for creatives, it can be very challenging to make ends meet and also feel spiritually fulfilled. Most days, I feel that I’ve somehow miraculously achieved this, although it’s not really a miracle. Balancing personal projects, marketing and branding work, having a social life and a relationship, and taking care of yourself (mentally, emotionally, and physically) require extremely full, long days. But I wouldn’t have it any other way. These hours can be exhausting, but more often than not, they don’t feel like it because creative projects are life-giving. I derive my energy as much from them as from food and sleep. I’m the same woman who drew all over her dorm room walls and writes poetry on little slips of paper everywhere she goes— and thank God for that! I never want to lose that woman, and I make my life choices accordingly. Where I make ends meet, she also sits happy, healthy, and growing, with stars in her eyes.