Mastery (31 page)

From early on in life, Teresita Fernández (b. 1968) had the feeling that she was watching the world around her from a distance, like a voyeur. As a young girl growing up in Miami, Florida, she would observe the adults around her, eavesdropping on their conversations, trying to decode the secrets of their strange world. As she got older, she applied her observational skills to her classmates. In high school, people were expected to fit into one of the various cliques. She could see clearly the rules and conventions that went into being a part of these groups, and the kinds of behavior that were considered correct. She felt alienated from all of these different cliques, and so she remained on the outside.

She had a similar experience in relation to Miami itself. Although she had an affinity with the Cuban culture that was part of her own background as a first generation Cuban-American, she could not identify with the happy beach lifestyle that prevailed there. There was something more somber and edgier to her spirit. All of this accentuated her sense of being an outsider, a floater that did not fit in anywhere. There were other floaters in school, and they tended to drift into theater or the art scene—places where it was safer to be unconventional. Teresita had always liked making things with her hands, and so she began to take art classes. But the art she produced in high school did not seem to connect to that grittier side of her character. It came too easily; her work was too glib and superficial; something was lacking.

In 1986, still uncertain of her direction in life, she entered Florida International University, in Miami. Following her high school inclinations, she took a sculpture class. But working in clay, with its softness and ease of manipulation, gave her the same feeling she’d had in high school of making things that were merely artificial and pretty. Then one day, spending time in the sculpture building, she noticed some artists working in metal, crafting large-scale pieces. These sheets of steel had a visceral effect upon her unlike any other artwork she had seen, and she felt in some way that this was the material that had been meant for her all along. It was gray and heavy and resistant, requiring great effort to shape it. The properties of steel corresponded to the sense of resiliency and power that she had always felt inside herself, despite her petite size, and that she had always wanted to express.

And so she began to apply herself feverishly to her newfound medium. To work in metal required firing up the foundry and using acetylene torches. The tropical heat of Miami could make such labor intensely uncomfortable during the daytime hours, so she began to work on her sculptures exclusively at night. This led to an unusual schedule—starting at nine, working until two or three in the morning, then sleeping through a good part of the next day. Besides the cooler air, working at night had other advantages—with few people around, the studio was quite peaceful and conducive to serious work. She could focus deeply. She could experiment with her pieces, make mistakes that no one would see. She could be fearless and take chances.

Slowly Fernández began to take command of the medium, and in making her sculptures, she felt like she was forging and transforming herself. She was interested in creating pieces that were large and impressive, but to make such work she had to devise her own method. She would design the pieces on paper, but would work on them in smaller sections that she could manage by herself. Then, in the quiet of her studio, she would assemble the sculptures. Soon her pieces began to be displayed within the department and on campus.

Almost everyone was quite impressed by her work. Standing in the bright Miami sunshine, her enormous steel sculptures conveyed that sense of power she had always felt within her. But there was another response to her pieces that surprised her. Because few people had seen her at work, it appeared that these sculptures flowed out of her effortlessly—as if she had some unusual gift. This drew attention to her personality. Sculpture was a largely male domain that tended to attract the most macho male artists. As she was one of the few female artists working in heavy steel, people naturally projected onto her all kinds of preconceptions and fantasies. The discrepancy between her slight, feminine appearance and her large-scale, imposing works was quite glaring, and people would wonder how she managed to make such work, and who she really was. Intrigued by her character,
and also by the way her beautifully crafted sculptures seemed to appear out of nowhere, they saw her as alluringly mysterious, a mix of hard and soft qualities, an anomaly, a magician with metal.

With all of this scrutiny, Fernández suddenly became aware that she was no longer a voyeur, watching others from a distance, but was at the center of attention. The art world felt right to her. For the first time in her life she had the sensation of fitting in, and she wanted to hold on to this interest that others had in her work. Now that she was thrust into a more public position, it would be natural for her to want to talk about herself and her experiences, but she intuited that it would be a mistake to deflate the powerful effect her work had on others by suddenly revealing to everyone how many hours she had applied herself to these sculptures, and how they were really the product of intense labor and discipline. Sometimes, she reasoned, what you do not reveal to people is all the more eloquent and powerful. She decided to go along with the image that others had of her and her work. She would create an air of mystery around her, making sure not to talk about her process, keeping details of her life hidden, and allowing people to project onto her their own fantasies.

As she progressed in her career, however, something about the persona she had created in her university years no longer felt appropriate. She noted an element in her public personality that could play against her—if she were not careful, people would judge her based on her physical appearance as an attractive young woman. They would not see her as a serious artist. Her elusiveness might seem like a cover for a lack of intelligence, as if she were merely feeling her way through things, and not on a par with the heavy-hitting intellectuals in the field. It was a prejudice female artists had to deal with. Any hint of being wishy-washy or inarticulate when it came to talking about her work carried the danger of feeding the preconception that she was frivolous, merely dabbling in the arts. And so she slowly developed a new style that suited her well—she would be assertive and speak with authority about the content of her work, while still enveloping her work process in mystery. She was not weak or vulnerable, but in clear command of the subject. If male artists needed to seem serious and articulate, as a woman she would have to appear even more so. Her assertive tone was always dignified and respectful, but she made it clear she was no lightweight.

Over the years, as Teresita Fernández became a world-renowned conceptual artist working in all types of materials, she continued to play with her appearance and make it fit her changing circumstances. The stereotype for artists is that they are disorganized and only interested in what is happening in the art world. She would play against these expectations. She transformed herself into an eloquent lecturer, exposing her work and ideas to the public at large. Audiences would ponder and be intrigued by the
discrepancy between her pleasant, composed surface and the complex, challenging content of her discourse. She became versed in many fields outside art, combining these interests in her work, and in the process exposed herself to a wide range of people outside the art world. She taught herself to mingle equally well with the workers mining the graphite for her pieces as with gallery dealers—a kind of courtier flexibility that made her life as an artist much easier and made it impossible for her to be typecast. In essence, her public persona became another form of art—a material she could cast and transform according to her needs and desires.

It is not generally acknowledged or discussed, but the personality we project to the world plays a substantial role in our success and in our ascension to mastery. Look at the case of Teresita Fernández. If she had merely kept to herself and focused exclusively on her work, she would have found herself defined by others in a way that would have hindered her progress. If, after her initial success, she had boasted about all the hours of practice that went into training herself in metalwork, people would have seen her as a mere laborer and craftsman. They would have inevitably pegged her as the female artist who was using metal as a gimmick to promote herself and get attention. They would have found weaknesses in her character to exploit. The public arena, in art or any endeavor, can be ruthless that way. Able to look at herself and at the art world with a level of detachment, Fernández intuited the power she could possess by being conscious of her persona and taking control of the appearance dynamic.

Understand: people will tend to judge you based on your outward appearance. If you are not careful and simply assume that it is best to be yourself, they will begin to ascribe to you all kinds of qualities that have little to do with who you are but correspond to what they want to see. All of this can confuse you, make you feel insecure, and consume your attention. Internalizing their judgments, you will find it hard to focus on your work. Your only protection is to turn this dynamic around by consciously molding these appearances, creating the image that suits you, and controlling people’s judgments. At times you will find it appropriate to stand back and create some mystery around you, heightening your presence. At other times you will want to be more direct and impose a more specific appearance. In general, you never settle on one image or give people the power to completely figure you out. You are always one step ahead of the public.

You must see the creation of a persona as a key element in social intelligence, not something evil or demonic. We all wear masks in the social arena, playing different roles to suit the different environments we pass through. You are simply becoming more conscious of the process. Think of it as
theater. By creating a persona that is mysterious, intriguing, and masterful, you are playing to the public, giving them something compelling and pleasurable to witness. You are allowing them to project their fantasies onto you, or directing their attention to other theatrical qualities. In your private life, you can let the mask fall. In this diverse, multicultural world, it is best that you learn how to mingle and blend into all types of environments, giving yourself maximum flexibility. You must take pleasure in creating these personas—it will make you a better performer on the public stage.

3. See yourself as others see you

Growing up with autism, Temple Grandin (see
chapter 1
,
here
, for more on this) had much to overcome in life, but by the end of high school she had managed to transform herself—through keen desire and discipline—into a gifted student with a promising future in the sciences. She understood that her greatest weakness was in the social arena. With animals, she had almost telepathic powers to read their moods and desires, but with humans it was the opposite. People were too tricky for her; they often seemed to communicate with one another through subtle, nonverbal cues—for instance, falling into patterns of laughter in a group, according to some interpersonal rhythm she could not fathom. She felt as if she were an alien, watching these strange creatures interact.

It seemed to her that there was nothing she could do about her awkwardness with people. What she could control, however, was her own work. She decided she would make herself so efficient in whatever job she had that her social handicap would not matter. But after graduating college with a degree in animal behavior and entering the work world as a consultant in the design of feedlots and cattle handling facilities, she realized, through a series of mistakes on her part, that this was completely unrealistic.

On one occasion, Grandin had been hired by the manager of a plant to improve its overall design. She did an excellent job, but soon she began to notice that the machinery was constantly breaking down, as if it were the fault of her design. She knew that the malfunctioning could not be because of any flaws in her work, and with further investigation she discovered that the machinery had problems only when a certain man was working in the room. The only possible conclusion was that he was sabotaging the equipment to make her look bad. This made no sense to her—why would he deliberately work against the interests of the company that employed him? This was not a design problem she could solve intellectually. She simply had to give up and leave the job.

On another occasion, a plant engineer had hired her to fix a particular problem, but after a few weeks on the job she noticed that there were other
parts of the factory that were very poorly designed and clearly dangerous. She wrote to the president of the company to point this out. Her tone in the letter was a bit brusque, but she was annoyed that people could be so blind to such design issues. A few days later she was fired. Although no explanation was given, it was clear that her letter to the president must have been the cause.