One of my favorite benefits of being in Creative Writing is how in love with art Heather Woodward is. Often class will be positively derailed for a trip to the SFMoMA or the De Young Museum. Just the other week we joined a virtual event hosted by MoAD: “Art As We See It | Indigo Kind of Blue” in which they showcased various pieces of art (all uniquely blue) paired with music. We also had the opportunity to visit the Pacita Abad exhibit in the SFMoMA: a bright explosion of color and human experience that is impossible to unsee. Most of the time, I am so impressed and inspired by each and every visit that I wind up taking others to see it. At the sight of Abad’s underwater paintings, I recounted my dad’s stories of his time working at a tropical fish store. I was reminded of my mother’s painting style when I saw Abad’s portraits. I searched for some of her watercolor paintings of me and my sister the moment I got home. I would immediately message my parents and friends, “We’re coming back here this weekend.” Art Saturday offers any students in the Bay Area the opportunity to see and experience art for free. It was on an Art Saturday trip that I first saw “The Visitors,” a video art piece installation in the SFMoMA. “It made me appreciate being a human again,” my sister described it after going to see it herself. I have begun to think of art as the octopus in one of Pacita Abad’s paintings: a tentacle grasping and sticking to everyone who looks at it, luring us into its realm of inspiration, using its abundance of hearts to make you notice your own.

Through these spontaneous adventures, I am constantly reminded that art inspires art and I am able to embrace my own art in a new way every time I interact with new art around me. In the Kinship Exhibit at the SFMoMA, we analyzed the way that every distinct relationship a person has with something they love leaves a universal mark on them. I have made it my life’s goal to see that mark on every piece of art I come across. My mind feeds off these heart pumping and gratifying trips, inspiring new connections and leaving me with new insight that I will cherish long after I graduate. Never have I ever been so in love with art than I am now.