Introductions are terrifying and exhilarating. Not long before my most recent big, terrifying, exhilarating life change I had read an article by Margle Warrell on How to Raise Brave Girls. My parents did none of these things apart from encouraging me to read books because the real world was too terrifying but they found it comforting to raise a daughter with her nose in a book because they thought perhaps it would be safest. I’m afraid that my parents were right that the real world is terrifying but through genes, luck, good fortune, education or something completely ephemeral I am a voracious learner. Not a straight A sort of learner. That requires a type of grit, intelligence and persistence that was not innate to me and took many years of stumbling and falling for me to understand.
My rough plan for this site/blog is two-fold: to conquer a fear of failure and to exhibit the multifarious subjects which compel and propel my art. The title of my blog, “Sidgwick Black Studies…” embodies the way I live and create. For my Bachelor Degree I studied Anthropology and Anthropologist is the term that most closely defines me. I identify as a writer and visual artist materially because what I study is then transmuted onto pages and into digital code in a way that is more abstract than literal, philosophical and ephemeral instead of making an attempt to define in a concrete sense. I’d argue that by making fiction, journaling and creating visual imagery I escape the need to make value judgments in the search for knowledge but of course such an idea is false. Instead I make the argument that my eyes are eternally wide absorbing the wide world of knowledge and attempting to make sense of it through acts of creation which fall under the banner of writing, art and photography.
I also love to cook (and eat) and have a newly acquired appreciation and love of physical activity (running, swimming, strength training, Pilates and yoga). How these will all come together I am unsure but I hope you’ll embark on adventures with me!
Sidgwick Black 