March 2008
Once upon a time, I considered myself an artist.
As a child, I spent every free moment hunkered down with a sketchpad, pencil and gum eraser. I took art lessons in the summer at the local community center and secretly believed I was very, very talented.
When I was 17, my parents sent me to a small Christian liberal arts college near Chicago, where I enrolled as an art major. That didn’t last long. Finding myself surrounded by students as gifted, and in many cases, much more gifted than myself, my confidence waned. Sophomore year, I changed my major to marketing and abandoned my identity as an artist for more “practical” pursuits.
Following graduation, I gravitated toward the entertainment industry, working alongside songwriters, singers, actors, directors and the like. I felt a certain satisfaction in having found my way into a creative community, despite it being a world where the lines between “the talent” and “everybody else” were clearly drawn.
It wasn’t until I turned 30 and discovered Julia Cameron’s book The Artist’s Way that I understood those lines need not be so rigidly defined. Cameron’s motto, “Leap, and the net will appear,” was my inspiration to become a freelance writer. My way of making art, it turned out, was with words, not pencils and paints.
Not all of us can create like the late artist Oswaldo Guayasamín, whose breathtaking works currently grace the walls of Vanderbilt’s Fine Arts and Sarratt galleries. But that doesn’t mean we’re not artists.
Each day we are making art, whether we lovingly coax words into fiction novels, like the English department’s Tony Earley; dream up opportunities for transintitutional collaboration, like the Warren Center’s Mona Frederick; or deftly isolate DNA for human research, like the Clinical Research Center’s Nadine Rihani.
And that’s not to mention the staff and faculty I’ve met who, in their spare time, are yodelers, belly dancers, cake bakers, rubber ducky collectors, cartoonists, robot builders, origami folders and deep sea divers.
If you’ve decided you’re not a part of a creative community, you might want to think again. The 22,000-plus individuals who make up Vanderbilt’s workforce are as talented, gifted and artistic as they come. What better place to follow your dreams?
Go ahead, leap. You can be sure the net will appear.
Joan Brasher
Editor in Chief, Vanderbilt View
view-editior@vanderbilt.edu
Letters
I want you to know how much I enjoyed reading your “Editor’s Note” in the February issue of the View.
Of particular interest to me was the information you shared about your husband Scott, his late father Bob Brasher and the Sho-Me Baseball Camp in Branson, Mo. I was born in Branson and my late grandfather, J. Frank “Goldie” Howard, helped start Sho-Me in 1958. He continued to work there nearly every summer as an instructional coach until Bob Brasher purchased the camp in 1967. For most of those years my grandmother, Opal Howard, served as the camp cook, and my dad, Robert Groves, was also employed at Sho-Me as a lifeguard and handyman for four consecutive summers.
In the early 1970s, I was a baseball camper at Sho-Me for a few weeks each summer and have very fond memories of Coach Brasher, as well as coaches Bill Hickey, Wally Moon, Vern Kennedy and my all-time favorite pitching coach, Ernie Nevel (my grandfather’s best friend).
Your note connected beautifully with the View’s cover story on Vanderbilt baseball coach Tim Corbin. It is the dream of my 12-year-old to one day play for Coach Corbin, something I know his late great-grandfather would have been most proud to see. Many thanks to you and your article for conjuring up cherished memories of the game and family I love and that continue to shape my life.
Jay Groves
Vanderbilt Dayani Center for Health and Wellness
Posted 03/01/08
