We recently connected with Coriander Focus and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Coriander thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Can you open up about a risk you’ve taken – what it was like taking that risk, why you took the risk and how it turned out?
In march of 2020 I lost my job, lost my relationship of nine years, and lost my housing. I realized that I had a choice to either continue to live in an apartment I couldn’t afford being sad in the middle of a pandemic or I could choose the plot twist.
I would always joke with my Mother that I was one bad breakup away from living in a chicken footed cottage, and it turned out to not be a joke.
So I bought a 1990 30ft Catalina Coachmen RV, named her Gerti and remodeled her in a month. I asked my Mother who is also a professional artist and writer to paint chicken feet on my new mobile Witch cottage.
I spent two years traveling, parking my little house in the woods, by the ocean, and in the desert.
I went to state and national parks, traveled down the west coast from Seattle to San Diego. I wrote endless poetry and I did photography across the country.
It was easily the biggest leap of faith I have ever taken.
I had at that point run a Patron for a few years and had a couple hundred dollars coming in every month from my supporters, but when I set sail from the Appalachians to find my way from coast to coast I put all of my trust into my community to support me. They went above and beyond by joining my Patron which paid for gas and food, as well as offering driveways for me to park all across the country.
I took four thousand photos in 2020 which more than doubled what I had done the year before and then doubled that again in 2021 with over eight thousand photos in a year.
My Patreon community continues to support me as a full time artist which allows me to do artist residencies and take other artistic risks with the knowledge that I have a community of people who love and support me. It has been one of the most magical experiences of trust.
Coriander, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
I am a fulltime multimedia photographer and writer.
My main goals with my work is to create art that connects people to themselves and to the natural world. Every step of my artistic process is meant to invite, engage and challenge. I avoid major editing of my photos opting instead for images that are both real and feel tangible to the viewer. I want people to remember that beauty and magic are both around and within us all the time, especially now when everything feels so dark.
I work with photography and written word as my main mediums, and I enjoy adding multimedia elements to my printed images, working with mirror fragments, embroidery, needle felting and found objects to add layers and depth to my work.
For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?
The most rewarding aspect of being an artist is the way it has space to hold and encompass all lived experience. I don’t believe suffering is required to create beautiful art but I do believe that art blooms from the soil of living deeply. The more I step into my experiences the more vivid my work becomes. And the ability to share that with the world is incredibly powerful.
When we feel deeply we turn to art seaking out poets who give voice to our joy and our despair, we listen to music that sings to our soul, we crave art that understands us. I find getting to connect to that depth of feeling and share it with everyone else who has ever experienced it is the most rewarding thingI can do as an artist.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
My beau and I often say that if you’re gonna be soft you gotta be tough. The creation of art is the most vulnerable soul-baring thing many of us can do. We write poems or create art that speaks to the depth of our mind and body.
The Business of Art is taking that soul-baring creation to a stranger, showing them, and having them send an impersonal decline email. It is a brutal world to be a creator in.
I think my resilience comes from practice. I wish I could pass on a magic fix for any artist who finds themselves easily hurt but as far as I can tell it’s simply born by balancing on the tightrope of total narcissism and utter destruction. There will be a lot of people in the world who don’t like your art, don’t be one of them.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://corianderfocus.myportfolio.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/coriander_focus/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CorianderFocusPhotography/
- Other: https://www.patreon.com/CorianderFocus
