Why We Make Art

The process of making is embodied

I saw a video recently that said: “Anxiety is energy that’s stuck in your body. If you’re anxious move.” So I tried it.

Puppy tax (front to back): Journey & Wonder, Santa Fe, NM 2026.

It worked. I bested my prior highest squat weight in the gym later that day. When I left the gym I felt lighter. I was breathing deeper. Nothing felt quite as impossible as it did 30-minutes prior.

When I finished my MFA during peak COVID-19 and had to reformat a darkroom on my own to finish my thesis I learned something similar. As I moved the large black and white prints from tray to tray on the floor many times over, as I watched the faces of my sitters emerge in the developer it began to feel like a walking a prayer labyrinth. The repetition, the pattern of it, the quiet. I just didn’t have words for it then.

After a day in the darkroom I’d leave feeling better than I had when I arrived. The anxiety and energy of living through a pandemic moved through me … and I made something beautiful with my hands.

Making also helps us work through questions that don’t contain easy answers. Making allows us to knead the dough of our interior life. Making, especially by hand, taps into that energetic flow and allows for release.

What a metaphor: anxiety is a drive to understand or control what is outside of our sphere. Moving our bodies through the act of making art gives us an opportunity to let go of what isn’t ours to hold in the first place. Making the art, the garden, the pie all invite us at the end to release our creation — to release the energy behind its existence. In so doing we may find peace.

Weeks ago I discovered that anxiety moves through me when I move my body while lifting heavy weights in the gym. Years ago I discovered the darkroom was also a prayer labyrinth. Today I was reminded that the final act of creation is letting go.