When visiting www.votasmeets.com, you’ll find my artistic statement detailing why I made the collection, Aorta Transformata. I wholeheartedly invite you to visit, as it describes why I made the art that depicts the journey of the healing heart in vividly raw, yet beautifully human emotion. Everything I’ve created, I’ve lived. You’ll also get a glimpse of who I am and where I’ve been in my biography. There it states, “After making several life changes in 2007, involving her health, career, marriage, and residence, Arianne began further developing her sculpting skills by working on large-scale, multi-dimensional pieces combining the use of clay and canvas”. In essence, my essay for The Entrepreneurial Artist Contest is not about what you can find on my website. My essay is about what you will not find.

What you will not find listed in my biography is that I was a “no show” the first day of school the year I won the Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club Local Teacher of the Year award. Instead, there was a substitute. Instead, I was in the hospital. Luckily, I’d been unusually motivated and set up my classroom about a week prior. The doctors said I’d been hemorrhaging so intently that I almost died on the table while having an emergency surgery just a few days before. My students didn’t meet their eccentric teacher, who decked out the classroom with a real stage and twinkling white lights, until a bit later.

Fall of 2006 also brought the death of my marriage and my dog. What my student’s didn’t know was in December before break, my life was in shambles. I know…it sounds like a bad country song.

Although, they didn’t know the full scope of everything, they did once see me cry, not a highlight of my career in education. Sometimes you’re not a teacher or a role model. Sometimes you’re human. Part of what kept me going that year, was my student’s energy and hope. They gave so much more to me that year than I them. Sometimes I’m not sure what I did to deserve them nominating me in droves for the award. There were many things I didn’t do to my usual standards because I was running on empty and hadn’t yet learned to fill my own tank.

Yet, I do know what I did with great consistency. I saw my students as real people – real people who needed understanding, love and compassion. When they cried, I gave them tissues. When they had successes, big or small, we celebrated with grandeur. When it was their birthday, we sang.

What you won’t find on the website, is that the first knowledge of my existence in this world was celebration as a better option than cancer. My birth was not planned, and my mother was a brave superhero. I was never the typical case and all the doctor’s pregnancy tests confirmed – not pregnant. It was only after the x-rays, doctors discovered I wasn’t tumor, but life. My father, who raised, adopted and loved me with all his heart, showed me what true love looks like in action.

Part of my personal journey to love myself was to get over the idea I was somehow a mistake, an inconvenience, or burden. Let me make clear that this isn’t a story about how my parents didn’t love me enough. They did and then some. I just had to join them.

The result, after much therapy and self-reflection, is called Legitimate, an individual piece resembling a heart-shaped checkmark. It hangs with a statement reading, “Some of us just needed a skin suit. Check yourself in”. There are no ‘illegitimate’ people in this world. Not all great things are planned. I am here for a reason. So are you. There are more stories to tell, yet only 1,000 words.

My overall entrepreneurial goal is for the twenty-four piece Rebirth Sequence to live fully in this world, whether it’s bought as a permanent fixture in a public space or a traveling exhibit. It currently lives at Flourish Studios in Chicago until March. 2nd.

While creating it for me, I realized it was for everyone. A quote by Sonia Choquette states, “Healing occurs when a person feels accurately seen. And when they are accurately seen, they feel beautiful. They feel loveable. They feel whole.” As people see themselves reflected, it’s my hope that they can better love themselves and each other. This ripple effect will positively impact the world.

There are several other layers of entrepreneurial scope. One goal is a book which features each work photographed with a corresponding self-written essay and recipe. Yet another goal is to travel the fifty states and create each state’s heart. All hearts are assembled into a large, piece in outline of the USA.

Another goal and the reason for recently earning a culinary arts degree is VOTA: a coffee sanctuary- a place to foster deep conversation and personal enlightenment. At root, it’s an artistic community coffeehouse, with a space that hosts educational activities related to its mission.

Making the art taught me to trust the process of life. Life will bring you exactly what you need, when you need it-like this contest I found this week. Listen and all directions will be clear. Life puts you exactly where you need to be to experience exactly what you need to experience, as the groundwork for your greatness.

Each time the clay broke while molding, it always looked better broken or suggested new direction to the land of surprise and delight. Sometimes relationships need space and air to gain new perspectives and mend the whole. Sometimes your perfect healing will show up unexpectedly, looking really strange. Sometimes you don’t know the whole story. You just know the next step. Take it. If you listen to your gut screaming and reflect, it will lead you home.