We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Elizabeth House a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Elizabeth, appreciate you joining us today. I’m sure there have been days where the challenges of being an artist or creative force you to think about what it would be like to just have a regular job. When’s the last time you felt that way? Did you have any insights from the experience?

Being an artist or someone who creates requires a lot of vulnerability on its own. Being an artist who creates something to be consumed by strangers all to ready to critique something so personal can be a lot, to say the least. At the moment, I design winter guard shows for local competitive groups, and I also compete myself. I work tirelessly to craft these programs and to hopefully create something that the performers and audience can connect to. I pour a lot of myself into both my personal performances and the shows I help design and it’s difficult to go out every weekend in front of large groups of people and know they’re going to not only perceive but also judge your technique and how well you perform whatever story you have. In my opinion it’s even more difficult to sit down at the end of the day and listen to those judgements through a tape recording and have someone point out all the things “wrong” with it, knowing they don’t know the extent of the work I and other performers put in. The same can be said for digital art. Preparing personal pieces for a demo reel or portfolio and constantly putting them on display via personal website, portfolio review, or job application is just as difficult as physically standing in front of an audience. Eventually that anxiety or fear of being vulnerable or perceived wears off a bit just through exposure, but the judgment, failure, and rejection still hurt just the same when they do happen. These things often times make being creative feel like a chore; add the pressure of doing it on demand so you can pay the bills and sometimes it feels impossible to be an artist today and be happy.

At the same time, all of that work is an outlet. Knowing someone was impacted by a performance I was a part of, whether I was on the floor or behind the scenes, fills me with such joy and confidence in myself. It’s nice to have that external reassurance especially when there’s internal uncertainty in yourself and your capabilities. I think that’s kind of a universal experience for every artist since the things you create are intrinsically tied to a part of you. In the same vein, seeing a project through to completion and being proud of all of the things you’ve learned and how much you grew in the process is such a good feeling of fulfillment and pride. That feeling is one I try to keep ahold of regardless of how other people perceive my work. Being happy as an artist I think boils down to that mindset and a lot of times that’s a conscious choice I have to make; to keep that confidence in myself despite the constant technical judgment. Sure, other “regular” jobs might not have all the pressure and fear, but they also don’t give me the fulfillment in myself quite like creating does.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I grew up in a very creative household. My dad is a music teacher, and my mom is a super crafty person, so I was always surrounded by creative projects and the arts. I took every art class and lesson I could growing up, along with piano lessons and was introduced to SCAD my sophomore year of high school. I loved Disney movies (like everyone else) and really wanted to pursue animation, so when I was accepted to SCAD my senior year, it was a dream come true. My first semester there I attended a majors and minors fair for a class. Goofing off with my friends I had sat down at one of the pianos in Poetter Hall and began to play. I remember the chair of the visual effects coming up to the bench and asked what I was playing. I told him it was Arabesque by Debussy. He asked if he could play something, sat down and played the first part of Clair de Lune for us. It was one of the first moments at SCAD where I felt like I belonged. After my first year at SCAD, I quickly became disillusioned with animation and felt really lost in what I wanted to pursue. I wanted to stay connected to the arts somehow, but I had begun to miss the more technical side of thinking I had grown accustomed to at school. I remembered the interaction with the visual effects chair at the fair and decided to look more into the major. It turned out to be the perfect fit for me. I went on to get my B.F.A. in Visual Effects, with my senior project being a two-minute CG Rube Goldberg machine that I made almost entirely on my own. To this day, it’s one of the accomplishments I am most proud of. I am now in the market for all things CG with a special interest in lighting and am looking to expand into real time engine usage soon.

Aside from being a CG artist, I am also in the pageantry arts. I was involved in dance starting at a very young age and started competing in middle school. Being in such a music-oriented family, I joined marching band in high school. My dance background led me to color guard, and I marched all through high school, still continuing competitive and studio dance. When I graduated high school, I continued to participate through local competitive winter guards. I also started a dance minor at SCAD, participating in their productions whenever they were available. After taking a year off of winter guard to graduate college and obtaining my dance minor, I moved back home and quickly realized I missed being involved in the guard community. I started teaching dance technique to local color guards and found myself in the position to choreograph and design winter guard programs. This is one of my more recent accomplishments and I am extremely proud of the products I put together and am honored to be able to give back some of the joy dance and color guard has brought me to the local community. I do still performer as well in a separate group and am just as blessed to continue to express myself in this activity.

I think the biggest overlap between these two disciplines is the amount of problem-solving required to make a project come to life. I love being challenged and finding a solution to any problem I have, whether that’s in a performance setting or a CG project. Both of these paths offer immense opportunity to learn and constantly reinvent your way of thinking as both are constantly evolving and growing. My knack for problem-solving and commitment to any project I’m a part of are what sets me apart from others.

Are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?

There are so many free online resources digital media for learning that I wish I had known about before starting my degree. There’s even more now with the rise of working from home and virtual learning. I came into SCAD not knowing anything at all about computer graphics; I had no knowledge of any software, techniques, or how any of it worked. I kind of just went into everything blind with the mindset that college would teach me everything I needed to know. While that sentiment holds true still, I do wish I had known just how much was available to me. If I had those resources then it might have helped me feel less overwhelmed or less like I was at a disadvantage when I started taking classes more geared towards digital art creation. I do feel like I could’ve gotten more out of some classes and really honed in on building a strong portfolio sooner had I known sooner rather than later. Another resource that I really wish I had used sooner was peer feedback and review. I knew it existed but I let fear get the better of me for a really long time, to the point where showing my work to anyone was enough to make me run and hide. Knowing now that nearly all of my peers struggled with the same mental block and are genuinely there to help me learn and grow is something I wish I had realized way sooner in my career.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative?

I think a lot of people who aren’t involved in the creative industry or who aren’t creatives themselves don’t realize that a lot of job opportunities in this industry are freelance or for a set term. There isn’t a lot of stability as far as full-time staff positions and those positions when they do open up are extremely competitive. Specifically in the digital art industry, numerous companies are furloughing employees right now and this drastic ebb and flow has been happening for the past couple of years. It’s to be expected a bit in an industry that changes so rapidly with the expansion of technology, but consistent employment is not always easy to come by especially in recent years.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.elizfx.com
• Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/elizfx
• Other: https://vimeo.com/user156818602

Image Credits
Kara Leigh