Thursday, November 6, 2008

OBAMA!!!


The afternoon before the election, I sat in the Western Addition Community Center in San Francisco volunteering for the Obama Campaign, making phone calls to the battleground states on my native coast. Skin and hair, damp from the constant downpours the city had been eager for, i trudged through the flooding streets, broken umbrella and all, to find my way into a building converted to a Barack Obama paradise. People were dispersed throughout having quiet conversations that were occasionally interrupted by a bell, which meant that someone had just spoken to a citizen who was a definite voter for Obama. I entered this environment solo, so some intimate space was what i searched for. I sat on the stale carpet floor, alone, wedged between a floor plant and a fogged up window, cellphone glued to my ear and a stack of phone numbers to strangers i would only speak to this once, for this one reason.
I was calling Virgina, my once neighboring state, now so far away. Initially, I felt an East Coast comradeship, at the same time anticipating a distance not geographically, but in opinion.
As i began to make phone calls, and continued to do so for hours, i noticed that on my checklist, i still hadn't talked to anyone who supported McCain. Was it a coincidence...or was i really communicating with dozens of like minded Americans of all ages, ethnicity, and political backgrounds?
At a point, I feared the "outside", so-to-speak, opinion. It has been easy for me to feel comfort in the people a liberal and open minded artist naturally flocks with.....living in one of the most open minded cities in the country. So i prepared myself for rejection and ignorance from the other side of the receiver....only to be pleasantly greeted with plenty of pro-Obama responses. And when i did eventually receive the "Why don't you go Barack-Obama-yer-ass somewhere else," response, i could only find pleasure in the ignorance, and the chuckle i responded back with, well it brought me back to reality. As well as tying that nervous knot inside my stomach a little tighter.

The most gratifying phone call I made was to a 46 year old African-American man in central Virginia. He had indecisiveness in his voice from the minute he answered, a tiredness, a defeated undertone, but for some reason he wanted to talk to me. He said he wasn't voting for McCain..but he didn't think he would vote at all. In his explanation, he expressed his discontent with the government as a whole, with the two party system, and in an exhausted manner, confided in me, his fear that nothing will be different or can change. I surprised him when i agreed with him fully and provided him not with a robotic campaign volunteer response, but with an honest opinion and vision. I shared my political views, and my ideas for a solution, focused on unity and the concept that we must work with the system we have now in order to move forward.
As we discussed all sides, the conversation was to come to an end. The tone in his voice didn't change much, due to heavy contemplation on his end.
"Can we could on you to vote for Obama tomorrow, sir?"
"....:silence:.....Yes...Yes you can....thank you."

In one phone call...i helped a man realize that his vote was important and so was his voice. I helped him realize he wasn't alone in his views, and that our shared concerns about our society are worth fighting for.

So message to all of you is this:
If we let the system work us, or resist the system completely, we will fail inevitably.
We must take a different approach this time. We can no longer mimic past failures, nor can we revert back to a way of thinking that our minds have evolved away from. A new generation....a new mission.
We have created this opportunity for ourselves to make the last attempt to save who we are and the country we live in.

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

New Life.

So what's all this talk about a shift in consciousness at age 23?
You are probably thinking..."What talk?"
And yea...good question...there isn't much talk actually. I guess it's just been a personal observation of my own mind and evolution in the way of thinking and of those around me within in the same age bracket.
I'm not sure how to explain it and i'm sure that 75% of individuals my age haven't even noticed.
Everyone is too...busy....conforming to the kind of lives we are "supposed" to live.

I'm sure i may never had noticed myself if I hadn't allowed myself to be open to...well everything... in the past several months. If i hadn't left behind everything that I knew was constant and took on a type of nomadic lifestyle that has allowed me to open up every pore that exists on my body to absorb what's around me both emotionally and visually.

But it's there. And part of me wishes that someone told me it would occur (it would have relieved the initial stress of being a recent art school grad who is advised that NYC is where I am supposed to go next) , but the majority of me is rather pleased to not have known.
I would have expected too much, like we as human beings always do.
But I let go of everything....comfortable.
Sold my belongings.
Headed to destinations that I had never explored
And abandoned the fears we all have of...."and then what?"
and ended up gaining more understanding about life..society...and my art making than I ever would have if I chose i different path.

But this evolution and development in how I see things, feel things, and think about things has changed me into an entirely different person, and more importantly , a different artist.

As I continue you on this...personal journey...this artistic voyage..I often times wonder when the time will come when i truly am introduced to my "new self."
I fear it sometimes....afraid I will feel even more foreign than I do right now, although deep down I anticipate the unfamiliarity I expect, because I am sure it won't be unfamiliar at all.
And maybe I have always been in a way...foreign...to everything around me.
I'm not there yet. And i don't know where I will end up.
...and i'm ok with continuing this unexplainable discovery of self and purpose.

Sunday, September 21, 2008

Saturday, September 20, 2008

Resume.








San Francisco.

We decided that we would stop here for a little while.


History.

I grew up here:




I went to college here:



After college, my life began to transform here:



And it continued to do so, so i headed out West:




And we moved to Santa Fe, and it pretty much changed our lives:



So we kept on moving....

Previous work...

Please view my complete portfolio here:

Intro:

So, due to my lack of web design skills, www.KristinFialko.com, is temporarily on hold.
Therefore, in the mean time, I have began a blog.



My most recent body of work entitled:

"Burning Boxes"




“Lithium, Zoloft, Depakote, Ritalin, Zyprexa, Risperdal...”
Oil, shellac & wood-stain on paper and panel
84” x 102”


“The Death of Innocence”
Oil, shellac & wood-stain on paper
42” x 77”





“Side Affects Unknown”
Oil, shellac & wood-stain on panel
42” x 67”


ARTIST'S STATEMENT
Human existence has relied very much on the act of conquering. Throughout history, we have convinced ourselves that to be powerful, we must conquer our counterparts. Gender, race, religion, ethnicity and difference in opinions have all been reasons to go to war with one another. The idea of conquering has filtered into our natural thought processes and throughout our lives we will invest a great amount of energy trying to define, understand, and ultimately conquer everything we don’t quite comprehend. Some of the main things that we don’t comprehend are the obvious, one being that the act of needing to conquer really only leads to self-destruction.
One of the greatest struggles a conscious human being is faced with is how to establish a balance between the dualities life presents to us, and the dualities we present to ourselves. To appreciate beauty we must see the ugly that lies within it and to truly feel pleasure we must experience and accept pain. This concept, in relation to our psyche, expresses that for us to gain more knowledge of who we are, we must accept what it is we truly know, both the pleasant and the unpleasant, the known and the unknown. If we don’t embrace the duality in everything, we begin to loose complete touch with our psyche and end up in a society established by lies and false representations.