joseph
squier

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I was never supposed to be an artist.  

In school, I was tracked into math and the sciences — what we now call STEM. I had a natural aptitude for tests and could sit quietly in my seat, which seemed enough to determine my path. Ironically, I was dyslexic, had trouble focusing, and daydreamed uncontrollably. But I masked those impairments. Being a “good student” was one of the few reliable ways I could please my parents, and I learned to perform that role with precision.

My home life had trained me for this kind of discipline. I was raised in the American Midwest, in a landscape of long shadows and flat fields — terrain that seemed, in its quiet, to hold a kind of invisible tension. That same tension lived in our house. Both of my parents struggled with mental illness, and with my stepfather in the picture, our days were marked by chaos, neglect, and the constant threat of violence. My mother, often overwhelmed by her own pain, swung between depressive withdrawal and manic intensity. What might have been a refuge became instead a place of instability, fear, and trauma.  

In that chaos, I found something essential: a refuge in imagination. I developed an early ability to detach, observe, and invent other worlds. If the one in front of me felt uninhabitable, I could construct another — one made of images, rhythm, form, and narrative. These inner landscapes didn’t erase what was difficult, but they gave shape to it. They offered the beginnings of coherence.  

That instinct to observe, to reframe, to build meaning from memory has followed me ever since. But for a long time, I didn't know that what I was doing was art...

...to continue reading narrative vita:
Section 1: Making Meaning

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images . words . links . contact joseph squier

images . words . links . contact
joseph squier