By Natalie Yates
[This work comes from the Art of Storytelling class, taught by Julia Satterthwaite.]
She drew a heart. An anatomically correct heart. Not the heart shape attached to love notes. A real one, arteries and all. Carefully colored and shaded with pencil.
She grabbed scissors and cut it up. Slicing entire pieces away from the page.
She took those pieces and thread and carefully stitched them back together.
She lit a flame and burnt them.
She drew charcoal flames and assembled the heart on top.
A scissor wound lay unfilled, the charcoal flames passing through it.
The thoughts that were swirling were now driving her pencils. The scissors that tore at her heart, mind and soul were now ripping through the page. Her hands were creating a healing stitch. The flame tore at the pages as her emotions did her body. The charcoal flames inhaled oxygen from the world around her.
The hole stayed untouched. For her physical heart may be free of a puncture wound, her heart was still broken.
For Venelope Ortiz, words have never been a reliable form of expression. Her culture is not a place of emotional conversations and deep self explanation. She’s never been good at using words to express herself. She makes due with pens, pencils, markers, charcoal and graphite.
For her, art materials reach deep emotions and find thoughts with no voice. They fill numerous pages that words can not. As she grasped to fill the hole, the project lay finished with the hole untouched. Lack of address brings forth address. Acceptance. Acceptance that some things hold an irreplaceable spot. The things held dear in one’s heart might not pump blood throughout one’s body, but pump joy through one’s life.
When all was said and done, Ortiz realized, “Pieces of me were constantly getting cut and I was putting the pieces back together.”