Syracuse, New York

I began my journey in Syracuse, New York after sub-leasing a room in an apartment building from a recent environmental graduate going back home to Jamaica.  It was within my budget, and walking distance from two fantastic independently-owned coffee/tea cafes, a library, a couple pizzerias, as well as a couple ethnic food restaurants.  I lived surprisingly well with a Colombian woman working on her PhD in architecture, as well as an small family that was comprised of an Indian woman and a Greek man who had just moved from Alaska with their two sons (her parents lived in Syracuse).  I truly enjoyed living with these people and we all managed to share the tiny bathroom and apartment exceedingly well for the amount of people living there.

I moved to this apartment because I had enrolled in one summer course at Cazenovia College to get a class out of the way senior year.  It was one of the hardest/most interesting summer's of my life filled with being as broke as I've ever come in my life, dumpster diving, and being as creative as I could with stretching a budget, staying creative, and eating as healthy as I could.  At the end of my three-month stay sub-leasing this apartment my boyfriend at the time (now ex-boyfriend) had moved in with me as well as his good friend who had just recently moved back from Hawaii looking for work again in central New York.   

I've bounced around five times since that first sub-leased room on Westcott St. (one of the small hip cliques for coffee lovers, vegans, and Syracuse University attendees) living in a tent in a friend's backyard, living in a low-income area only to have both my car and apartment broken into, as well another apartment, sharing 1/2 of a two-family home, to a small two-bedroom condominium that I currently share with my current beau, Gregory. 

My point of this anecdote is that Syracuse was not a "planned" move in my life growing up.  I had no set goals of where I was going to go after receiving my undergraduate degree in the arts and basically made the best decisions with what I had.  I feel that Syracuse was that place where I would save up for my next big move, work on my art, and be mainly as a in-between point for me on my journey.  I felt this way up until yesterday morning before work when I had an epiphany concerning local venues where I could potentially show my work as well as create small solo shows.  I had reached an epiphany on my fate in Syracuse and realized that maybe I was "intended" to stay longer than I had originally anticipated here.  This in-between state was meant to be more rooted than that...and that maybe I was meant to make stronger connections here with my art before I depart.  

This may not seem like much of an epiphany to anyone else, but I feel differently about my stay and my artistic outlook of Syracuse.  I am currently researching graduate schools in the United States as well as requesting catalogs to determine my next move as an artist and the step in my education (I am very passionate about continuing my education and learning in the arts).  By the end of my stay here, I hope to have some solo exhibitions under my belt and be a better adversary to any upcoming exhibitions I apply to.

-Caroline