Kekoa Paki Arts

Hello viewer,

I understand it’s been some time since I last posted on social media. I do apologize for this. You simply must understand that I get quite busy with schoolwork during the quarters and don’t really have the time to write these here blog posts. I could post my work on Instagram without an accompanying blog post, but that’d be weird since the main reason I have an Instagram account is to advertise my website. Additionally, I like the opportunity for reflection writing these blogs gives me.

Fall quarter this year has been even more busy for me than previous ones. I’m attending Western Washington University in-person, which requires me to drive a little more than 3 hours a day to and from campus most days of the week. This has severely limited the amount of free time I have nowadays. Not to mention the fact that I have a “real” job now. I only work about 6 hours a week, but it’s still time I no longer have.

If you’ve been following my Instagram, which you should be, you may have seen the application video I made for the CIEE Leading Change in Latin America fellowship, which would’ve completely paid for me to take a study abroad in Merida, Mexico. I’m sorry to inform you all that this opportunity fell through due to factors outside of my control. I still am deeply interested in Mesoamerican art and culture and still hope to go to Mexico one day. Sadly, however, that day will not be soon.

In completely unrelated news, I’m going to therapy now. So that’s cool. Trying to get better coping skills for when I get really upset. I’ll tell you guys if anything interesting comes of it.

The town that I live in recently got flooded. It happened literally the night I finished finals at my school. At least it didn’t happen while I was at finals, I suppose. Me and my family got out early on and ended up staying at my grandparents’ house for a few nights. Our house was fairly high up though, so we didn’t end up sustaining any major damage, which I’m very thankful for.

In all honesty, I feel somewhat guilty that a thing that destroyed the livelihoods and heavily damaged the homes of so many people who live near me amounted to sort of just a vacation for myself. My family assures me that things like these are matters of chance, and it was mere luck the river didn’t consume our house as well. Still, I feel bad for the people whose lives were negatively impacted by the flood, and I hope they can recover quickly.

But this quarter hasn’t been all bad. I officially won the “Everyone’s a Critic” competition at the Skagit County Historical Museum and am going through the paperwork to officially donate my piece, “The Past, Present, and Future of the Pacific Northwest,” to the museum! I mean, it was guaranteed I would win because no one else in my age bracket submitted any work, but it’s still cool. I also did a live performance at my University called “The Human Canvas,” and it went pretty well. I’ll probably end up writing a whole blog post on the performance, so look forward to when that comes out.

Additionally, I got into the 5th issue of the Monochromica art journal with my piece, “Hollow Heart,” which is also very cool. If you’d like to know more about those pieces, here are the links to the blog posts I made about the making of “The Past, Present, and Future of the Pacific Northwest,” and “Hollow Heart.”

Life is certainly quite stressful nowadays, or so it would seem to me. I hope you all can find your ways in all of this. I should have more stuff to share with you over winter break which I hope you’ll enjoy.

Thanks for reading this blog post.

From,

Kekoa Paki