Ruby Smalheiser

In a world that's unreliable and constantly subject to change, it’s often hard to find something that stays consistent. Sometimes it feels like life is moving a million miles an hour and we as humans need something to comfort us or keep us sane; a branch to hold onto when the sky is falling. For me, that special something has always been art.

From the moment I was born, art was vital in my life. My father, an obscure blend between hippy and punk, was a guitarist. My mother, a California girl who’d recently lived in New York City, was a film editor. Both of my parents believed the correct way to raise me was to surround me with arts of every form. Every single day until age 6, I heard my father's guitar strums fill the house with glorious melodies. While my peers grew up with calming lullabies, I grew up with Talking Heads and The Velvet Underground. When I had tantrums that shattered glass, my parents would simply put on any Neil Diamond song, and it was as though nothing had ever been wrong with the world. The passion for music in my household only sparked a new passion within me: dance.

The moment I discovered my passion for dance, it created a doorway to unlimited opportunities. I had taken all my dolls and toys to the living room where music had been blasting from a speaker. I hopped, skipped, and leaped as my body bounced from note to note. My parents then decided to enroll me in dance classes. I started with ballet, as most toddlers do. As I continued my classes, I found hip-hop and modern dance. I traded in my pink tutu for black joggers. I started to understand what it meant to dance from the inside. To push all the emotions I buried within my out through my muscles and into the space around me. I found what real freedom felt like. I continued into my classes and became addicted to the feeling. I worked hard to improve my skills. I set goals for myself and soon those goals became reality. Before I knew it, I had joined the competitive team at my studio. Two hours a week shifted to ten, bumpy ponytails matured into smooth French twists, people in classes had turned into family, my local studio became something of a second home, and what once was a simple hobby grew into a passion and form of therapy. 

The freedom and joy I have cultivated through dance then expanded to visual arts. Drawing and painting were inaugurated into my life and changed it forever. My drawings were less specific as they didn't follow one subject. I drew chaos and was enchanted by surrealism. My brain just would never stop so drawing it all out created room for new. It was a reset and a way to silence the overwhelming thoughts that invaded my mind.  When I had it all down on paper it seemed as though my anxieties had been conquered. What seemed huge and terrifying had morphed into something I could share with others and look at. I could organize my thoughts this way.