Hazel Breyer
I obviously met her in the art room. (She's constantly working on a project.) How she focuses there, however, is an achievement I'll never have. People rushed, trying to find supplies or stored away projects while yelling for different whatnots, randomly appearing out of the closet with their paint brushes and what have you. Doing my best to stay out of there way and I, luckily, got to the counter stained with paint splotches and chalk marks, and there in front of it, standing in purple busted Converse, baggy hippie pants, and a tight white crop top (her usual style), was Hazel Breyer swirling reds with yellows and blues unto a canvas creating a young lovers face looking longingly into the eyes of another.
Before all that, however I started a staring contest with Hazel's portraits slanted against each other, lining the hallway leading to the room. The colors swooshing around, bumping into each other, formed faces melting with happy lips and eyes that never blinked. They are like a dark, disturbing joke, yet all that can be mustard is a gleeful smile.
From my meeting with her art, I found Hazel confiding in me that "painting is how I really express myself" as no surprise. The unsettling yet perverse comfort that rattled butterflies in my stomach like they were wildly trying to break free from their fleshy cage is (I can only imagine) what everyone experiences when confronted by the artwork. The same feelings must also be true for Hazel, but they come during the painting and a little before.
Her saying, "Sometimes I can't really deal with people," told me enough to know why. It seems hearts prefer wearing rose-color-tinted glasses, and it takes life experiences to shatter those lenses to better see when flags are red: Hazel's was no exception. She dealt with puppy love's awkward demands for years only to realize that sometimes it bites, and it took longer to learn that it shouldn't. Her soul has marks imprinted from these last four years, and, as she mentioned about painting, it is true for healing: "Time is key."
The following years will, I hope, provide her with a lighter pallet as she goes to the Cleveland Institute of Art and creates this world into her own beautiful image.
Written by Caleb Garetson