Light & Illusion - Space, Science Fiction & Nature Art

To Build a New Life

As a disabled person trying to build a life for myself is very difficult. My mental disabilities go back to childhood, some pretty sick things were done to me and another relative, leaving me to struggle eternally through life. An auto accident I was a passenger in 15 years ago has left me physically disabled, each day filled with endless pain and only able to spend brief periods standing/walking and briefer periods sitting (sitting is agony for me). I have little choice other than just trying to endure it, painkillers are a depressant and not advisable for someone living with depression.

Life for me these days is VERY frustrating as I work to enter into the world of art. As an artist, I love to create but in trying to get established on the Internet I quickly get overwhelmed, each site has different variables such as image size & file size, some I have to host image somewhere else, etc. Most of the art sites, contests & exhibitions all have fees (as well as costs of having a print made, etc) which I have no means of affording with only SSI for income. I also have to live with other problems, like extremely loud stereos, specifically the bass beat just instantly jams up my thought process, robs me of even being able to focus till it stops. I try hard to absorb it all but get so overloaded that I confuse things with another site, or something someone else said. It causes me a lot of problems but all I can do is the best I can, be honest about myself (good & bad) and hope my hard work & determination somehow makes a difference. And I apologize in advance if sometimes what I write doesn’t make sense.

Since my physical disability forces me to spend most of my time laying on my side, I keep my computer set up right next to my bed so that I can work as much as possible. I put a lot of my time into my art and I recently signed up in Dr. Kaku’s forum because I often do artistic representations of various elements of String Theory (black holes, white holes, wormholes, parallel worlds, etc.). I have to read articles & posts over and over again to grasp at least part of it, but Stephen Hawking is one of my heroes for what he has overcome in life. I too seek to rise from the ashes life has dealt me.

Some days are better than others for me. There are periods sometimes for weeks that I am so bad I can’t focus on much of anything, those days all I try to do is rendering and I withdraw from the rest. Partially so I don’t subject others to my problems and a lot because I just mess up left and right, like a moment ago going to check my email, closed the program instead. Realized it about 5 minutes later and had to reopen it. When I am like this it is impossible to design/create new artworks so I try to do little tasks. Usually I wouldn’t try to write but as this is like a journal entry, I wanted to get it done so you might understand a bit about me.

I am finally going to get to enter a competition for placement in the “Embracing our Differences” Exhibition. I really don’t know if I stand a chance but there is no entry fees and them make the print, so I get to take my first baby step I guess one could say. I’ll post it at the bottom for all to see. I like the theme because I can relate to it. Functioning in life is difficult because often people, businesses, government, etc, expect me to be able to do anything anyone else can and that is not always true.

Though I suspect they may not realize it, they often expect more out of me than they do themselves. I won’t even shop at a K-mart store anymore because the one here always closes out the handicapped lane and I got too many insulting remarks for asking someone to open it (can’t even count the number of times I just left because I couldn’t get checked out quickly and was in just too much pain). It happens with many non-profit organizations too. For example, when I was getting an endless runaround during the SSI process rather than proper examinations (the gov never took a single xray or MRI and didn’t request them from my doctor or hospital, just ruled against me), I contacted ACLU. When I received a reply it wasn’t to help but to tell me about their limited resources, which I probably would have accepted except the next day in the news is them using those precious resources to push for a girl to wear to school a t-shirt stating something to the effect that Barbie was a lesbian! Things like this confuse the heck out of me and I wonder if they just represent members/contributors and aren’t really about civil liberties for others.

This is about all the embarrassment I can handle right now, I will save more for future entries.

Randall Klopping

Artist’s Note - This was written yesterday and it was not a good day. I have left it as written so you & others can see what I struggle with. It took almost two hours to focus enough to write that little bit (I hope it makes sense).

disabled artists