The Art of Funeral Directing

1/3/2015

The Art of Funeral Directing

At the close of 2014 I submitted my application for graduate study at the University Of Wisconsin-Madison department of fine art.  I hope to return to graduate study in the area of painting and drawing and earn my MFA.  I enthusiastically and courageously took a leap of faith to reclaim my path of living an artistic life.  I am and will always be an artist, whether or not I have the fame and fortune of sustaining my family from the proceeds of the occupation. However, I want to live an artful life.  I want to wake up each day and have that be the work that I am engaged in.  I don’t believe that I can fully achieve all of my artistic goals without attaining this one.  At 36 years old, with 2 young children and a recent diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis, the leading cause of disability in this country, I don’t know how long I will be able to work.   I want my days of work to be filled with my passion.  I decided to follow this goal, narrowly missing the path, with an altogether divergent direction-mortuary science and funeral directing.  I’m sure it sounds very odd, but the truth of the matter is, artmaking is not altogether lucrative and funeral directing can be, it is also not a job for just anybody, and I am not just anybody. Consider these thoughts for a moment, and you may see that it is not as divergent a path afterall:

1. Funeral directing is an art, a performance if you will.
   
   
2. The body is the most revered art object that there has ever been.
   
   
3. The hands and the mind are the most important tools with which you accomplish your work.
   
   
4. It is your job to make beauty from pain, which is so often the wellspring from which artist draw from.