I heart art. From painting to literature to the Cadillac Ranch in Amarillo, Texas, I get what I like to call “art joy” from bearing witness to other artist’s works and from making my own creations. I’ve got a lot of projects in progress this year, both solo endeavors and collaborations, as do many of my synnie friends. I think 2022, the year of the water tiger, is going to be inspiring and savagely creative.
Research into synesthesia and creativity documents that people who have blended senses appear to be more attracted to the arts. In their paper Higher Prevalence of Synesthesia in Art Students, Nicholas Rothen and Beat Meier determined that art students were more likely to have grapheme->color synesthesia than their peers who were not aligned with creative pursuits. It’s worth noting that studies on the prevalence of synesthetes in the arts community, such as the paper by Rothen and Meier, do not conclude that synesthetes are better artists, only that there are more of us participating in the arts.
On February 1st 2022, the Lunar New Year coincided with St. Brigid’s Day. That afternoon, I attended Hox Zodiac, an interactive art salon|ceremony|co-creation hosted by Siddharth Ramakrishnan and Victoria Vesna via the UCLA Art | Sci Center. My offering for the Hox Zodiac gathering was based on the conflation of two cultures who were both honoring the first day of February. In my poem “On Lunar New Year, St Brigid Considers an Upgrade” I imagined a meeting between the agrarian fire goddess and the water tiger of this lunar year. You’ll find it below. I hope it brings you a moment of art joy.
“Hearts” photo above By Robbie Sproule from Montreal, Canada – Hearts, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=91682242
