Story

What’s behind the name?

Cozy comes from my maternal grandmother, Cosetta Young, my namesake, whom I called Grandma Cozy. She was a talented visual artist. One of the few women accepted into the well-known Arts Instruction, Inc. school in the late 1940s, she was not allowed to attend. Though she continued to think of herself as an artist, I’ve often wondered what would have happened if she had been supported in her artistic pursuits. From her I learned the art of letter writing, that it doesn’t take alot of money to show someone you love them, and that beauty can be found in the most everyday places, if only you have the heart to see it. She was resourceful, sensitive, colorful and… cozy. She lives on in my heart and my work.

Arts is well, the arts. Years ago, on a bit of a whim and in a moment of “what am I doing with my life?” I came across an ad about a graduate program in Arts Administration. And so I applied, and… got in. I tackled the graduate program with vigor and learned not just the nuts and bolts of the nonprofit world, but I learned about artists, what society thinks of artists, what one is told if you try to be an artist, what it really means to be an artist, the challenges that divide artists from “non-artists” and on and on. 

The ironic thing was that the more I learned about the “business side of things” the less I felt like an artist. In fact, when I entered graduate school I had been training and performing as a dancer for over 20 years and yet, identifying as an artist had privately become a challenge for me. An added layer of confusion was that I felt that I didn’t come from an “arts” family because no one in my family “did that” as a living (as if that were the true qualifier). I now felt divided, half artist, half administrator. So I looked at who I came from, to better understand myself.

I don’t come from a family of artists in the usual sense. My sister, a very successful civil servant and talented visual artist, has revamped the way her office serves the community by thinking creatively. My mother, a special education paraeducator, always found the most creative ways to help her students learn, and she has the most beautiful penmanship of anyone I know. My father is truly a master of many trades, can build anything from the ground up, often creatively reusing old items in new ways, and is a gardener by birth. My grandparents on both maternal and paternal sides, crafted, sewed and grew things of the highest caliber while working the fields, building and rearing families. I come from a line of everyday workers who are also artists and craftsmen. People who straddle worlds as others defined them and turned their lives into art. In that moment I realized something that has shaped my work ever since. 

Anything can be an art. 

It’s not about the subject matter, it is about the mastery that develops over time, the attention to detail, the thoughtfulness in the craft. I then understood this divide I felt within myself, artist vs. administrator, was not the dying of one art, but the birthing of another. As I learned and experienced the divide between artists and administrators, I witnessed the pressure felt on both sides and how each hindered the progress of the very thing both were trying to safeguard, the art. I saw the need for people who straddled the divide and honored the possibility of the art of both worlds. I realized I was one of those people. 

At the root of every divide there are at least one of three things: fear, a lack of belonging and loneliness. And there is one thing that can bridge nearly every divide. Thoughtfulness. It may seem overly simple, but by definition, thoughtfulness does three things: it requires one to slow down, think carefully and anticipate the needs and wants of others. Whether it is helping a flourishing artist find new outlets for her art, merchandising a boutique, advising a non profit on best practices, or crafting unique collage boxes for a loved one, my first aim is thoughtfulness. I am building a bridge to connect the world to art, by remembering our connection to one another, one thoughtful act at a time.