A woman in Fort Worth recently took a big chance to do something for the first time. She curated an art show.<\/p>\n
She called on artist friends to join in and exhibit their work, knowing full well she could have failed.<\/p>\n
But that was the point of it. <\/p>\n
\u201cWith risk comes failure a lot of the time. And I think the thing I’m really, really good at is failure,\u201d said co-curator Sarah Angle whose also a writer and instructor at TCU. \u201cI’ve taken a lot of risks. I’ve failed a lot. I’ve gotten rejected so many times from so many different things. But without all that failure, I would not be who I am today. I wouldn’t be the mother. I wouldn’t be the friend. I wouldn’t be the college professor. I wouldn’t be a writer. So I think that when we try, when we take that risk in life, and we’re vulnerable and say I’m gonna put myself out there, such great things can happen.\u201d<\/p>\n
The exhibit called The He(ART) of Failure featured 10 artists willing to explore their personal and creative missteps, \u201cto be vulnerable enough to share something that says failure to you. Visually, it could be in writing; it could give experimental exhibits, so whatever that is, would you be willing to do that? And they all said yes,” Angle said.<\/p>\n
There was misshapen glass, rejection letters, even duct tape from an artist who, right before the exhibit, felt like she was just holding it together. <\/p>\n
\u201cWith the deadline coming up, I needed something to put together for this show for Sarah, which I love, Sarah,\u201d said Layla Caraway. \u201cAnd putting something together, I told her, \u2018At this point, I’m just kind of holding everything together with duct tape. And she was like, That’s your piece; that’s all you need.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Caraway used duct tape to piece together a shirt and jeans and called her debut exhibit \u201cHolding it Together\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cI’m touched that so many people stopped and asked about it,\u201d Caraway said as she described a conversation with a guest who said it was her favorite piece. \u201cShe was amazing. She had a great story to go with why it was her favorite one, but again, we’re all holding it together with duct tape.\u201d<\/p>\n
The theme of failure as an art form itself resonated with Caraway. <\/p>\n
\u201cFailure is just fuel. It\u2019s just fuel. That’s all it is,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve always believed that in order to achieve your dreams in life, and to really excel at whatever it is you want to do, you have to take risks,\u201d Angle said.<\/p>\n
The exhibit was a big risk for Angle. Not only had she never curated an exhibit, but she\u2019d also never created a piece of art.\u201cSo, the chances of me actually failing at this art show were pretty massive.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yet, Angle and her co-curator Jocelyn Foster wanted to live out a New Year\u2019s resolution made 15 years ago to fail more. A social media post six months ago rekindled that old idea and led to the exhibit. <\/p>\n
The artist friends Angle and Foster called on embraced the idea, and alongside their pieces, they wrote about the art of failure.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is no failure if you learn something through it. There is still the moment of disappointment, but it is not as deep or lasts as long. My glass works are the artifact of learning how to adapt to and accept the realities of the situation,\u201d wrote artist Elena Greer.<\/p>\n
Artist and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Gayle Reaves-King explained how a personal failure led to the poetry she exhibited.<\/p>\n
\u201cHonestly, I don\u2019t know how failure applies to life or work or art except that it\u2019s just as much a part of life as breathing or paying the bills or losing a friend. When I was in my 20s and my first marriage was ending, I thought that \u2018failing\u2019 at things as important as love or marriage would make me a loser. I should\u2019ve looked around. Fortunately, a sweet neighbor I barely knew explained that to me. Thirty or so years later, when I sustained a much greater loss, I found poetry as a \u2018place\u2019 to \u2018put\u2019 my grief and loneliness and poets and other friends to help me through,\u201d Reaves-King wrote as she described the power of poetry. <\/p>\n
The exhibit ended its run, but the curators hope those who came left encouraged to fail bigger, grow further, push harder, and find the resilience to do it all over \u2014 again and again and again. <\/p>\n
\u201cOur hope is they feel inspired. They feel like, wow, these people did it, so can I. And ultimately, feel like it’s okay,\u201d Angle said. \u201cWe’re not perfect. No one can be perfect. I tell my daughter all the time; she’s 14, and she wants to be perfect. I’m like, \u2018Baby, perfection doesn’t exist. Let’s be messy, and it’s okay. We’re going to be real authentic, and we’re going to give it a try.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A woman in Fort Worth recently took a big chance to do something for the first time. She…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":406530,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[2407,116,118,117],"class_list":["post-406529","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fort-worth","tag-art-and-culture","tag-fort-worth","tag-fort-worth-headlines","tag-fort-worth-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406529","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=406529"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406529\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/406530"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=406529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=406529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=406529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}