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My Statement:

From quite a young age I was told by both adults and peers that I could draw. In hindsight, I believe, this is the reason I began to ask myself what art actually is/was, etc.; if I was good at it, how could I use that to build myself in the world? But, the art around me at the time had become more celebrity than draftsmanship, which I came to understand as I learned more from our world. When I really comprehended this idea, however, was when I was an undergraduate student. It started with clay sculpture and ceramics, and while some of my works did find their way to popularity with local eyes, I discovered that creating public murals and larger more obvious works eclipsed the crafts and trinkets which had brought me to art in the first place. I learned that, for me, art was not just some beautiful expression, an ode to draftsmanship and effort, or even shape and line which somehow signified timely intent, vision, and even talent. I was confused then, and I am still, as to what art ultimately is/was, etc.; but, even way back then, transforming my ego-driven understanding of expressing my talent into connection with others, I understood that art, for me, was a possible way to change the landscape I experienced around me, conceptually, and that it might even be a way to communicate a grander change to our world, and possibly spill over into reality.

But the world had other ideas in mind, which were driven mostly by my own deep internal struggles implanted by friends and loved ones. I heard it from my parents, from my friends, from everyone, including my high school art teacher (also the football coach), who taught me that I couldn’t earn a living with art, and that I should use the artistic talent and drive that I’d been honing since the third grade as only a hobby. That was, however, not exactly my plan, even though it was the sensible choice in terms of developing a career for life. In the third grade, after moving to Laguna Beach and being friendless for a time, I decided my future after having received public praise from my teacher for a piece that I drew. I was struggling at the time to figure out who I was, I still remember. It was a time that I felt totally alone and cut off from my family, alone, without peers, and without a voice, so it makes sense that I could have made such a rash decision at an age of such youthful ignorance. I just dug in my feet and leaped.

I excelled in the arts all the way through college, university, and right into a professional life living in Los Angeles. I traveled the globe and created deep, lifelong friendships. But, up until this day, I have struggled constantly with being an artist, deep in my soul, living in a world which doesn't necessarily reciprocate my passion. My life choices speak volumes on this dilemma, having succeeded thus far in helping to pay life's bills with many varied endeavors, bringing my high school art teacher’s admonitions up from the depths which I had cast them into. Accordingly, my work has been all over the map, including a period creating functional art and design when I ran my own custom woodworking studio in Colorado. Most surprisingly, however, I see that having engaged in so many modalities throughout my life: ceramics, woodworking, writing, teaching, and many other stability-driven creative endeavors, I've since been able to develop a more mature platform, and surprisingly to develop something else I’ve been struggling with from way back at the very beginning, from back in the third grade—to find my own voice—(yay)!

When I was an undergraduate student I built a process piece with over 700 tiny clay televisions. Each TV incorporated screens, knobs, and antennas, mostly found and manipulated from trash picked up in alleys. I glued each individual TV onto a sculpted pig-wire couch, which, after being exhibited, winning a first place award in an undergraduate exhibition at UCSB, as well as being reviewed on the cover of the Arts and Leisure section of the Santa Barbara News Press, ended up being buried under weeds in a field somewhere in the hills overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Thinking back on this episode of my life and art speaks volumes to me about how my work keeps moving and creeping, sliding forever forward into the next incarnation. Each spiral I draw, carve, write, paint, or even teach, builds a universe unto itself, eventually disappearing into the over-paint, stain, glaze, or the idea where it initially began, along with the future incarnations to come—I seem to perpetually relegate what's come before to memory, only, and then I push each brand new moment into the birth of its eventual … extinction.

I believe this is where the bones I build come from. It’s like having an ongoing conversation with a thing that resides within my head, within one of my pieces of soul. It’s always there, hiding, possibly implanted by loved ones and teachers, whispering that life could be different, that there could be something more, something tangible and relevant, a path to live by, exactly like what 'they' have all said during this lifetime—Why do we even do it, we ask ourselves, why is it ‘this’ that makes us alive; why?! Then, thankfully, even with a suppressed sense of glee screaming from some mental corner of my reality, we get tired … or hungry … or bored—enabling art and I to believe that we have no other choice and to then just, gratefully, move seamlessly on to the maneuvers of living.

© 2025 Drew T. Noll - All rights reserved

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"The moment you stop learning, that's the moment that ego puts your soul to sleep" 

After all - the layer under your skin is truth, the grey becoming white-matter, the absolute slowing of source, ascendance, knowing, back into One

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