In Middle school, I’ll be honest I hated my art, I loved creating art but everything i created wasn’t what I envisioned in my head and it was disheartening.

My other artistic classmates seemed to have their own style well established and I loved the art they created. It was a hard time and I attribute the fact that I continued entirely to the support of my peers, teachers and family. It was their encouragement that kept my skills from withering away to nothing.

My art teacher at the time, Mrs. Schutt always had incredibly fun projects for us to work on. We excercised our creativity in tons of ways. We learned to create such an array of beautiful things, I remeber the excitement of walking to art class. Walking through the door even on the worst days was reuvinating. I wasn’t anxious or stressed. I knew i couldn’t be lazy either, she always held me accountable to my capabilities and I appreciated that. I was never able to phone it in. It was her encouragement that led me to enter my art in competitions as well. I only remember winning one or two but they are cherished memories.

Once I was in High School my art skills really sharpened up, I learned more technical skills and a fair amount about historically significant artists. At this point i still wanted to be an artist but life was beginning to get in the way. Being a teenager was starring in a telanovella. Everyone is dramatic, everyone is fiiguring things out. My art was Definitely changing in many ways.

There were a lot of weird things I made and I wanted to describe a few of them. I don’t have photos of most as school art tends to get mixed in with the rest of life and get lost.

As freshman we did A LOT of technichal skills, but I remeber making clay whistles. we were able to sculpt the whistle itself and then a body/shape around it. I went with a Red Luma from the mario franchise. It had beautiful low whistle like that of an almost empty glass bottle.

In sophmore year I transferred to a new school and the first project i did there was a Monochrome Self Portrait. The skill we ere working on is one i still use today for enlarging my art onto a larger canvas-The Grid Method, it’s incredibly useful and I honestly don’t know an artist that doesn’t utelize this skill in some form.

We also did a pointilism project that I chose the eiffel tower for and have plans to remake someday as the limitations of classtime tended to affect the quality of my art at times

Junior Year was fun and I learned a lot I didn’t take an art class. Junior year is when my Bipolar disorder, unbenounced to me, really started to grow into itself. I was getting really depressed, distancing myself from my friends, even getting into unsafe situations. The experiences fom that year in my life were very much reflected in my artwork, some things I wouldn’t even process for years were. Art became my outlet and it, along with my friends, family and fandoms got me through some dark times.

Senior Year was a a fun year for art. The two most memorable things I made were a vase we sculpted out of clay, mine was of Yggdrasil, The tree of Life in Norse theology. And there was also a plaster sculpture. It was a Life-Size replica of X-Man and Mutant Activist NightCrawler. Kurt Wagner was and still is one of my favorite characters. He was a common sketch through all my high school years. Kurt was too big to fit in the minivan after graduation and tragically had to be left behind to find his own path. His whereabouts are unknown but he is never forgotten.

The past ten years has gone by faster than i expected, I value honesty and things got darker after high school, my addiction hit a peak without me realizing it. My art was pretty much nonexistent, I couldn’t see a way out of my situation when my best friend literally moved me. She paid for a plane ticket, made sure I got to the airport, gave me a ride, she gave me a place to get back on my feet and she encourraged me to keep trying. We started making art together and it grew my passion once again.

My addiction and I hit roock bottom when drugs got in the way of everything. My safety, my friendships, my values and everything else. My art during this time in my life showed the distorted lense that I was viewing the world through. It was during this time that I decided I wanted to start an art business. I made a facebook page and called it Erika’s Art. It went about as well as you think.

Soon after this I met my future spouse, I was in the process of watching myself light my life on fire as a result of the drugs and he asked me to get sober. He was there for all of the ugliness that came with me getting sober, but also realizing and grieving the fallout of everything that I had done for the past 2 years. He stayed and he cared and I got better, he encouraged me to keep trying with my art and I had a better idea of what to do now that I was making better decisions.

I started a page on facebook called Space Case Artistry and got a bit of traction. I still had to learn a lot about how to present my art. I still do! But I’m getting better.

Then the pandemic hit and I got my CNA, I worked with the elderly through 2020, And as a Support Professional through the beginning of 2021. At that point the physical demands of the job were unsafe for both myself and my patients as my disability was getting worse.

I was unaware for a few more years why I was in so much pain, I tried everything and couldn’t fix it. I learned that I have connective tissue disorder, I worked on coping with it, accepting it and learning to use aids meant to make life easier.

I kept making art throughout all of this, it was something i could do without exacerbating my pain too much. Art has remained such a paramount element in my life, it has seen all of me and it reflects it all.

My style as flourinshed into it’s own beauty throughout my life, and many beautiful things have inspired me. But I see a few themes that are always there.

• Cultural Heritage

• Kenop-sia/obia

• Mother Nature

• Hiraeth Nostsalgia

These recurring themes are all pieces of me that I think have fed into my art and nourished my skills in quite unique and unexpected ways. In my own words I believe I Fabricate Phantasmagorium.