This year for my honors experience I took intermediate composition, which completely shaped my writing! The most notable and important thing that I gained from better understanding composition was a more complete understanding of how art and writing interact throughout my creative process, so I've decided to reflect on how taking intermediate composition shaped my understanding of creating art. 

      Even before taking intermediate composition, writing and art have been inseparable for me- I believe that there is meant to be an ebb and flow between visual art and writing. They are meant to fill each other in and work together in their communication of an idea. Both fill in gaps, and both have no right or wrong (to some extent…) Writing is essential to my art practice, and has been essential to my ability to express myself! Writing will continue to be essential to me as I pursue a career in art and as I teach, as I believe that art and writing are meant to constantly work together. In intermediate composition  I've learned that the communication of any idea in writing can be artful, and that language itself can be art. I've learned that all writing is similar to art, as much like art there are infinite ways to communicate an idea, and the way that it is executed has the potential to entirely change how it is received. Through having the opportunity to develop my writing stills, I've found that I understand the way that I engage in art more fully.

In my first assignment I talked about how my view of the function of writing has changed with time- For much of my life I viewed writing as purely definitive, communicative, and functional. For many years I utilized writing strictly as a means of solidifying my experiences, thoughts, and interactions. I saw writing strictly as a means of resolution. Writing was scientific, writing was professional- it communicated indisputable points. Despite being a creative, I did not allow my writing to extend beyond what was solid- I did not allow my words any room to be interpreted in their own right, and did not allow them to extend into spaces that couldn't be fully defined. It wasn't until I experienced the ways that art and writing work perfectly in tandem that I began to understand that writing is not meant to be so rigid- by experiencing art and writing alongside each other, I've come to understand that writing is meant to be fluid and expressive, and that it will tend to be fluid and expressive whether it is meant to be or not. I found that art and writing work together so beautifully, as they both seek to capture and communicate what cant be captured and communicated in any other way. I currently plan to pursue fine art as a career- more specifically, I plan to teach! Transforming what I believed the purpose of writing to be through understanding writing to be an artform has been essential in my confidence as an artist, and in my confidence that I could pursue a career in art.

My final works of art are always accompanied by artist statements. Sometimes it feels absurd to have written so much about a topic, to understand it so fully, and to have created a work of art to encompass it, but to only have a few sentences on the wall to explain it. Still, as I write artists' statements, I find that I am beyond grateful that writing is an art in and of itself. My work and my writing work together, and while neither are capable of capturing an idea in full, they are able to fill in for each other, and both hint at the idea that there's more to an idea, and that it is up to the viewer to fill in the rest. My final works of art absolutely wouldn't be complete without Writing.

While I've always felt that writing is an essential aspect of my art process, intermediate composition taught me the value of fully developing the way that I use language to communicate an idea.  I've learned that my process for writing a complete paper is quite similar to the process that I go through to arrive at a completed work of art. I've found that I value the experience of using words alone to convey an idea! I'm grateful for the ways that my writing has improved, and for the ways that my writing process has changed, and am excited to see how my art practice will change as a result.