Another chapter in my life has turned over. For the past 10 months I was part of the 2010 Stand up for Mental Health comedy class.  Every Tuesday afternoon, myself and a small group of other Mental Health survivors met to pick at our emotional wounds and then expose them to others so they can laugh with us.  I always had the natural ability to entertain people, however having a formal structure to work was really a challenge at first.  I didn’t realize that there was so much intelligence that went into this process, from writing, delivery, content, pauses, facial expressions and stage presence; there is a lot going on.  Friends say that I am brave to do stand-up, however once you have a level of trust with the hard work you have put into it, then the confidence comes natural.

So you may ask why comedy in the first place, and how does it relate to your visual art?  As a mental health advocate, Stand up for Mental Health seemed to be the perfect vehicle to say what I need to say and that is a large part of my creative outputs.  Whether it is radio, writing, or painting the core of who I genuinely want to be is the same, sometimes the medium needs to fit the context of where you are. I had always envisioned that my art on someone’s wall would say something.  Eventhough a hanging art piece is visually static, I would hope that it would be representative of a current state of my mind everytime someone looks at it.  Each new experience I go through I share and so I wanted to feel like I was having a conversation, even though I am not physically there.  I want my art to be positive and to tell a story, so why not throw in a few jokes in the process?

So while my official comedy career is over for the moment, I’ll be continuing to tell stories, you’ll have to search out which form I will now be telling them in. 

Either way there will be a punchline that is designed for impact.