Every Moment Is An Opportunity For Reflection & Transformation
by Jeremy Miklas
(Artist Statement as presented to the BestSelf leadership team)
This is the title of the piece; it is taken and modified from a quote that has been visible in my house everyday for nearly a decade. “Every moment is an opportunity for love and transformation”. It comes from an artist that has influenced my work and me for a long time. Alex Grey is an artist that promotes healing and enhancing ones mental state with the power of art. I discovered his work when I was younger where he contributed to many album covers in the early 2000’s for bands that I listened to. His work influenced me as I navigated my way through University at Buffalo art school where I started to hone my own visual style. After receiving a bachelor’s degree in art I entered the real world of earning a living and this is when I hit a roadblock in life, I began to struggle with addictions. For the next few years my mental state became a place that was full of fear, boredom, loneliness and depression, art went to the back burner. Thankfully, due to a strong support system I was able navigate out of the misery that I was in and get on a healing path. Fortunately for me, creating art returned and kept me going in the right direction.
I was able to transform that experience into a new desire to be a working artist. I began creating new artwork, which was unlike anything I had made before, a breakthrough of sorts in my mind. New works that were vivid and interesting to me became the building blocks for what I consider a real art career that I would soon embark upon. On top of that, Alex Grey’s influence was again in my life after I read his book “The Mission of Art”. This is an inspirational book about art’s power to bring about personal catharsis and spiritual awakening. Fast-forward 10 years to where I made the decision to quit my full time job as a graphic designer and web producer to become a full time mural artist.
Now 6 years later, here I am in front of you all, I have been given the greatest opportunity of my career thus far. As I reflect upon the process of the past 5 months, it has been a journey of emotions where fear and self-doubt are flattened by confidence and excitement; I stand here a truly transformed person. The “me” from 20 years ago would have run home and avoided it all and just self-medicated. The “me” of today showed up to give you a bit of the process that it took to create the design that will be the BestSelf garden wall.
To begin with, the garden wall is very wide yet very short. It doesn’t have the dimensions of typical murals or typical works of art. This is going to be challenging I thought. Proceeding forward I must have read the RFP a 100 times. I tried to think of a way tell a historical story from left to right but I had a great deal of wall to cover for depicting such a young organization as is BestSelf. I let the request play through my head for weeks. I would read it again, and again. I let it sit there without putting a pencil to paper. I attempted to conceptualize something, anything that could make sense. The length of the wall became my greatest adversary. So instead of forming a complete concept that I could visualize on paper, I began researching other artwork and graphics that depict mental health. I scanned through 100’s of images and finally thought “Ok”, I will simplify this process by creating some sketches of my own, inspired by all these images.
My next thought was “how can I depict the growth of mental health in relation to the growth of Best Self”? I feel growth in general is where the concept starts and it is a suitable recurring theme for the garden wall. I had this thought that all things whether a plant, a human brain, or a non-profit organization, begin from nothing. This is depicted on the far left side, which shows a mostly empty, art-free area. After that I started reviewing the 20 or so sketches that I created and I saw this image of a brain that had blossomed like a plant, at this point I knew I wanted this featured on the wall. So I depicted the growth of the brain by I adding 2 panels that represented the seeds to be grown, before the panel of the blossoming brain. Thus I had the second section of the mural in place. This brain leads the way for the remaining visuals, which are examples of how our mind perceives the world around us. It takes in the beauty of the world like flowers and blue skies, it takes in the darkness of the world like being alone at night, and it absorbs all information in between and molds our behaviors in a unique way. It makes us feel all this information and then we react to the information. We can often react negatively to the stimulus in the world that we get to a point that requires healing. With proper guidance, we can internally grow the tools we need to heal.
At this point in the creative process I notice that many of my sketches depict different moments of contemplation humans can experience while alone or with other people around. These are mostly snippets of information gathering, absorbing, and interacting. I took some of these moments and pieced them together to fill in the remainder of the wall so that they tell a non-linear story. My hope is that the panels will evoke feelings, which can cause the viewer to reflect on their own life and perhaps they can assist in transforming ones self as they interact with the wall. At the end section we also see big, strong trees that are securely grounded that sort of mirror the brain blossom and flowers from the beginning part of the mural.
The use of panels reminded me of a vast series of 21 panels that Alex Grey created called Sacred Mirrors, which examines the human body, symbolic spirit, and aspects of the human mind. My thought here is to examine how we as individuals interpret the world around us and how we deal with it. Throughout the wall there is growth and processing and individualism where I provide space to reflect and transform which I find to be similar to the purpose of the Sacred Mirrors.
Finally I wanted to tie the entire journey together in a sense, I went to the beginning of the wall again where I placed 2 plants growing out of the ground that represent the 2 organizations that would merge into one, here we see the 2 plants (labeled as Child & Adolescent Treatment Services and Lake Shore Behavioral Health) intertwine to form one “BestSelf”. The “BestSelf” vine continues to grow in length while sprouting new leaves, which represent programs that the organization offers and will offer in the future. The vine weaves in and out of the panels while providing support throughout the rest of the artwork.
Thank you for allowing me to share this journey with you. Every moment truly is an opportunity for reflection and transformation