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Who am I and How did I get here ?

 

Gabija Korsakaitė (GlassOfB33r)

1996-05-23

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Born and still lurking in Lithuania, Šiauliai I have realised that the only consistant thing in my life has been art, whether it was diy jewelry, clothes or just drawing, the need to create

 never left me.

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Like most children I used to draw Pokemon, Digimon, animals from my encyclopedias.. and caskets with vampires in them. The usual. I don't remember much from my childhood, but I do remember doing doodle exercises with my dad where one draws a squiggle and the other has to find something within the shape to draw. That is something I still will recomend doing to expand your creativity.

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My teenage years are another blurry mess. Rebeling against post soviet views of the locals and being just about ready to be trown out of every school, even the artsy highschool which did reignite me to take art just a bit more seriously. Too bad that getting perfect scores in drawing doesn't mean you don't have to pass math.

 

After grade 12 I really wanted to go to university..for art. just art. not math, not chemistry, just all types of art. I was so exited. But I guess since I didin't know anything about anything I missed the deadline to go that year. By this time I was really into working with charcoal and just expanding myself in the realm of art. But since I couldin't get in I felt like such a loser and insdead went to this "training centre of technologies" for like wall painting or something like that. That place..to me was where creativity went to die. Even my teacher was like oh don't even try doing antything with art it's just not worth it. Well..There I met a drinking buddy and I think I went to the actual place like 6 times that whole year. 

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Next summer I took my portfolio to the University of Šiauliai, did my exams and got in.

and looking back at it now this was the most.. artisticly expanding time of my life. I have never felt this push and it wasn't just a push it was learning from great local artists, learing not only the basics of well everything technically it was also learning about the path of the artist.

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In university is when I had my first real art show  that I would have never been brave enough to do without my mentors, the first people in my city to show me that art can be serious, that it IS a real path to take and without them I most likely would have just ended my path.

Thank You.

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I finished my Mayor's degree while covid was happening so instead of getting another chance to show our work in a gallery..

We did it at home on our webcams..yay

It was a real weird time to graduate

no jobs, no gallery work, no volunteering.

So I focused on selling prints, stickers, original artwork and doing commissions.

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Life continued on, I went back to the people who only saw an art career as a hobby or you better be making big money from it for it to be seen as "real"

That, my awful mental health and some clients abusing the fact that I was desperate for money really sent me into a new spiral of existential crisis.

I thought if I had a job I could just do the art I want to do and not worry about commissions.

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And that is where we are now.

I just lelf a job that made me too tired to even think about doing social media art things to promote myself, barely did any drawing at all.

As I am writting this in the beggining of 2025

I am starting a new job, I am getting back into drawing again, I have a few art shows on the horrizon and all I can tell you is that art..is still the only path I see and I don't know what that will look like for me, but no matter how rough this path will be, it's the only way I'll go.

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