My sustained investigation is very personal, and kind of selfish (in my eyes, at least). My whole life, I've focused very much on how I can help others, and how I can contribute to make the world a better place, even if I'm not acknowledged for it. Last year, my class was told to think about why we make art, and put that into how we continue to make our art. My reason for making art has always been to make others feel something; I want to make someone smile or help inspire others through my art. And I still do, since that still is very much how I operate as a person. My purpose on Earth is to do good so that others can be happy and content.

But I realized something as I started working on a mini-series based on my "why". Even though I was carrying on with the same, general theme from the mini-series from last year, it meant something different to me. Whereas in the past, my mini-series was meant to show how I've improved over time to have strengths and weaknesses both, this time my mini-series was made to reflect how I look back to move forward. I believe strongly in using past experiences to help with progressing and growing, and my art is no different than anything else I apply that mentality to. I do redraws so I can use the old to apply the new to, and I use "old" methods of creating art to improve even further. As I continued thinking about it, I realized that it goes deeper than just that. I'm not only looking back to go forward, but I'm pulling apart myself and learning just why I do the things I do. So I decided that was the direction I want to go.

My sustained investigation this year focuses on my outlook on myself, and the world. It's meant to force new ideas and tear apart the comfort zone that I've been desperately trying to escape. It's making me face my fears, accept my flaws, and discover who I want to become. While the pieces may seem extremely personal or too vague to understand the meaning behind it, I know there's going to be at least one other person out there that will see it the way I do, and there is at least one other person out there that sees it in a completely different way. I want my pieces to touch everyone in a way that is individual to them, whether that be with a realization that person didn't make before, or with someone relating to the piece and being thrilled that there are in fact people like them out there in the world. I know my thought process isn't "normal", and I know that I look beyond what most people might see. But while I long thought that my quirks and differing mentalities made me an oddball and made it harder for me to achieve success, I now want to turn those "weaknesses" of mine into a way to improve myself and my art. I want to take this opportunity to better myself as a person, as well as help other people take that first step they need to start looking deeper into themselves.

My mini-series became an attack on my comfort zone, and the first willing attack on my normal methods of art to the point where the person sitting next to me in the art room glanced over at me as I scribbled very slapdash over the paper with metallic pens, and asked, "Zéta, are you okay?" (I honestly thought I was going to rip that paper, I was being so aggressive with those pens.) My response was something about how I was thinking so far out of the box that I was destroying it at this point. Then I started to smear white-out at random all over the paper. The teacher came over and noted how there was a halo-effect going on around the figure's arm in the drawing; I immediately said, "WELL, LET'S FIX THAT!" and proceeded to slap some white-out on the paper and streak it across the figure's arm—which is something I never would have done in the past—and just left it like that. It was completely new to be free of having "perfect lines" and "clean pen and ink work", as that's what I've been known for in my art for a while now. And then I forced myself to use those black-and-white pen and ink lines that I was so comfortable using, showing the stark difference between the two main pieces of my mini-series. It showed not only my growth, but the restraints I had unknowingly put on myself through my growth. What happened to that little artist that could care less about coloring outside the lines?

As I contemplated on this, I went to start brainstorming on ideas for my next piece that I needed to make for the class. I had the vague idea that I wanted to create a piece that showed how sometimes people aren't always meant to do the same things that other people are meant for, and I scribbled out thumbnails of someone that had fought as a knight in the war and was the misfit during the fighting, but the only one with a purpose after the war. I couldn't figure out how to show it, and I struggled for a new way to display such a complex concept. As I went to show my teacher my ideas that I had come up with, she agreed that I needed to either make the idea behind the piece less complex, or find a different way to show it.

I thought back to an experimental piece we had done not long before, where we had taken a piece of paper and used verbs from a list we received to turn it into art. Most of the others in the room began with "to cut" or "to rip" and proceeded to rip and cut up the paper. What stuck out immediately to me was "of friction", and I started to run the paper over the edge of the table, the way one does to smooth out a wrinkled sheet of paper, which curled the paper into a cylinder of sorts. I then proceeded to fill a sink up with water in order "to swirl" the paper in the water. I took up "to knot" and tied up the coiled bits of paper that I had pulled apart into bits at the instruction of another verb, and then I found some string, tied the damp clump of paper to the string, and started swinging it in a circle to tackle "of inertia". (I'm not kidding; I can't believe it worked.) Then I let it hang from a stool I set upside-down on the desk to use from the list "of gravity". (I did in fact ask if I could light the paper on fire, but five others and I struggled to get the lighter to work for a good ten minutes and decided it wasn't worth it.)

This particular experience made me think on the fact that I never really do things the way others do. I tried to incorporate that thought into the drafting for the piece I was attempting to create, but nothing clicked just right. I talked to the teacher again, and somewhere in the conversation I realized what I wanted to do—but not in a way at all similar to my initial plan. I explained the spontaneous idea that had suddenly come to me, and my teacher told me to go for it.

And so I started on a piece that would hopefully show just how it feels to have the thought process that I have. Two main formats were on my mind, and I started on the first before deciding the second would work better for the size I was going for. I use myself in the piece to be the thinker, and the letters spelling "answer" are hidden among the chaos that fills the upper half of the piece. I wrote, "It's difficult to describe what's on my mind..." near the bottom, and half of the piece is entirely improvised with no sketching or planning. During a small critic with one other person, I was both shocked and elated when she guessed spot-on what my piece was saying, as well as going deeper into the meaning I hadn't even been trying to imply. She added afterwards, "I think the same way, too, so it's nice knowing I'm not the only one."

And so my mission was realized. I want to connect people, but also dig deeper into myself, hopefully showing others that it's okay to take a moment to look at something differently, or that maybe that person you thought had all their ducks in a line is actually a fountain of ideas that they have never been able to share in fear of being written off as "weird" or "different than the rest of us". And so I took things a step further. I decided it was time to take an "old" method of making art that I used to favor, and turn it into something new and even questionable. And thus I began my third piece, one that forced me to never use my eraser while I used pencil to create the piece.

From there, new ideas about myself and others continuously entered my mind. What other pieces could I create that make people look at it, and wonder what the heck was going through my mind when I made it? It's a process for sure, but it's one I want to explore with everything I've got, and maybe teach others that they can do the same, even if it's not through art. Maybe no one will know who I am. But hopefully they'll know themselves a little bit better after seeing my work.