A woman in Fort Worth recently took a big chance to do something for the first time. She curated an art show. She called on artist friends to join in and exhibit their work, knowing full well she could have failed. But that was the point of it. “With risk comes failure a lot of the time. And I think the thing I’m really, really good at is failure,” said co-curator Sarah Angle whose also a writer and instructor at TCU. “I’ve taken a lot of risks. I’ve failed a lot. I’ve gotten rejected so many times from so many different things. But without all that failure, I would not be who I am today. I wouldn’t be the mother. I wouldn’t be the friend. I wouldn’t be the college professor. I wouldn’t be a writer. So I think that when we try, when we take that risk in life, and we’re vulnerable and say I’m gonna put myself out there, such great things can happen.” The exhibit called The He(ART) of Failure featured 10 artists willing to explore their personal and creative missteps, “to be vulnerable enough to share something that says failure to you. Visually, it could be in writing; it could give experimental exhibits, so whatever that is, would you be willing to do that? And they all said yes,” Angle said. There was misshapen glass, rejection letters, even duct tape from an artist who, right before the exhibit, felt like she was just holding it together. “With the deadline coming up, I needed something to put together for this show for Sarah, which I love, Sarah,” said Layla Caraway. “And putting something together, I told her, ‘At this point, I’m just kind of holding everything together with duct tape. And she was like, That’s your piece; that’s all you need.’” Caraway used duct tape to piece together a shirt and jeans and called her debut exhibit “Holding it Together”. “I’m touched that so many people stopped and asked about it,” Caraway said as she described a conversation with a guest who said it was her favorite piece. “She was amazing. She had a great story to go with why it was her favorite one, but again, we’re all holding it together with duct tape.” The theme of failure as an art form itself resonated with Caraway. “Failure is just fuel. It’s just fuel. That’s all it is,” she said. “I’ve always believed that in order to achieve your dreams in life, and to really excel at whatever it is you want to do, you have to take risks,” Angle said. The exhibit was a big risk for Angle. Not only had she never curated an exhibit, but she’d also never created a piece of art.“So, the chances of me actually failing at this art show were pretty massive.” Yet, Angle and her co-curator Jocelyn Foster wanted to live out a New Year’s resolution made 15 years ago to fail more. A social media post six months ago rekindled that old idea and led to the exhibit. The artist friends Angle and Foster called on embraced the idea, and alongside their pieces, they wrote about the art of failure. “There is no failure if you learn something through it. There is still the moment of disappointment, but it is not as deep or lasts as long. My glass works are the artifact of learning how to adapt to and accept the realities of the situation,” wrote artist Elena Greer. Artist and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Gayle Reaves-King explained how a personal failure led to the poetry she exhibited. “Honestly, I don’t know how failure applies to life or work or art except that it’s just as much a part of life as breathing or paying the bills or losing a friend. When I was in my 20s and my first marriage was ending, I thought that ‘failing’ at things as important as love or marriage would make me a loser. I should’ve looked around. Fortunately, a sweet neighbor I barely knew explained that to me. Thirty or so years later, when I sustained a much greater loss, I found poetry as a ‘place’ to ‘put’ my grief and loneliness and poets and other friends to help me through,” Reaves-King wrote as she described the power of poetry. The exhibit ended its run, but the curators hope those who came left encouraged to fail bigger, grow further, push harder, and find the resilience to do it all over — again and again and again. “Our hope is they feel inspired. They feel like, wow, these people did it, so can I. And ultimately, feel like it’s okay,” Angle said. “We’re not perfect. No one can be perfect. I tell my daughter all the time; she’s 14, and she wants to be perfect. I’m like, ‘Baby, perfection doesn’t exist. Let’s be messy, and it’s okay. We’re going to be real authentic, and we’re going to give it a try.’” ...read more read less