Senior Brunch is a uniquely Ellis tradition – in many ways it marks “the beginning of the end” of your time at Ellis. The next four months or so will be filled to the brim will lots of moments like this, where you will receive some sort of acknowledgment or marker of your accomplishments thus far, not the least of which will be your high school diploma – the first major proof of academic achievement.

But I didn’t come here today to talk to you about all of the wonderful things you have achieved here at Ellis, and will most likely achieve in the future. I’m here to talk to you about failure.

As a group of individuals graduating from Ellis, I have no doubt that each and every one of you will have many successes in the future. You will be praised for these successes, whether they be in academia, in the workplace, in (or on) the field, on the stage, or in your personal lives. You will go Boldly in the direction of your Dreams. You will be strong. You will succeed. You’ve been taught that you can do anything, and you can! But that “can-ness” also includes the fact that you can fail.  If it hasn’t happened already, it will at some point. But don’t worry. Failing is really OK, it’s normal, and you know what? Like broccoli, it’s really good for you (in moderation, of course!).

Some of you may have already tasted some kind of failure, or will do so in short order. I don’t mean to wish you to fail, or to be some kind of Debbie Downer, but, let’s be real: like it or not, you’re going to fail at something sometime. For instance, you may be rejected from your top college pick. You might not get that summer job you applied for. You might not end up going to college right away. You might lose in the playoffs. You might get dissed by your prom date…

After any of these FAIL’s, you might feel pretty lousy. You might be embarrassed. Again, normal feelings to have. But – I say to you today, whatever you do, do not, by any means, push your failures under the rug. Just like “Everybody Hurts,” everybody fails. And while you may not receive a diploma or an award or any kind of acknowledgment for those kinds of experiences, there is significant take-away value in failure.

So: don’t hide your failures or hide from them. Instead, look your failures hard in the eye. Think about them, learn with them, from them. Hold them close, but do not let them harden you. Live with them for a bit, and then … let them go. They will seamlessly become part of who you are. And you will be a richer person by far if you try, at least, to always make new mistakes. Committing to this will help you personally, intellectually and professionally.

It sounds simple, even cliché the way I’m talking here about failure. But don’t get me wrong. Failing and learning from your failures will not always be easy. In fact, it’s really, really hard. Since I’ve lest Ellis, I have experienced many different forms of failure. My first tax season, for instance, FAIL! My first long-term, long-distance relationship: FAIL! My first gallery representation – FAIL! Graduate school applications? FAIL!!!

I’ve failed at jobs, relationships, housing arrangements, legal documents. I’ve missed important deadlines. I’ve hurt people’s feelings. And really, I mean REALLY embarrassed myself in public situations. I’ve forgotten this, or overlooked that. And you know what? I’m a better person because of all of it, but getting through the failing part was super-hard.

I could lie to you. Here, I’ll try it now. As a magna cum laude graduate from Columbia University, it was really awesome being rejected from every graduate school I applied to. Being dumped by my boyfriend of four years after I relocated to be with him? Oh, that was sweet! Yeah, well … I’m a bad liar. Excuse my word, but failing sucks, and learning from failures is really hard. But unless you recognize opportunities for learning through failure, which, by the way, includes admitting that you’ve failed, you will be doomed to make the same mistakes. And that is even worse than failing in the first place.
Know, however that no failure will ever diminish an achievement. In fact, used intelligently, accidents, missteps, un-plannables and failures make for incredible tools.

As an artist, part of my current practice involves deliberately seeking out and temporarily residing in moments that seem to be tensing towards failure – put simply, I like stuff that’s flawed, failing, or will be soon. Whether it’s trying to capture an image using a flawed Polaroid film that fades completely to black over the course of 24 hours, or turning my body into a broken record by singing the same song over and over, I actually like pursuing failure in my artwork – at least in part – because it’s a big part of what it means to be human. Failure to me as a person and as an artist has provided a means of learning new things about myself and the world around me, and leads me in directions that my imagination could never conjure on its own.

I’ll get off my high horse for a moment, and admit that I wasn’t always this way. In many ways, I first discovered failure as a learning tool at Ellis. There’s a story here. As a freshman, I was, for scheduling reasons, unable to take Beginners Studio Art. I had already been painting and sculpting and drawing seriously for years. Even then as a 14 year old, I strongly identified as an artist, and I certainly didn’t want to waste any time in my artistic development for something as silly as a scheduling snafu.

So, on the first day of school, I went to meet with Mrs. Moldovan. I brought along a book of paintings by William-Adolphe Bouguereay, the 19th century master of academic painting. At the time, I was all about Bouguereau. I thought his work was breathtaking, particularly in terms of skill. Using a brush and paints, he created spectacular, hyper-realistic, but idealized images of people, mostly women. Looking at one of his paintings, you could easily be provoked to reach out and touch one of the figures to make sure she wasn’t really there. You could say, I was totally obsessed with the Pure, Unadulterated Perfection of his images. And I wanted to make perfect images too.

So, in my meeting with Mrs. M as a high school freshman, I brought the Bouguereau book and asked her point-blank, “Why can’t I paint like this?” To her credit as a teacher, an artist and a person, she casually replied, “You can, it’ll just take some practice.” In retrospect, I think a big part of what Ellis did for me is embodied in that one moment, that you-CAN-ness that sets you down a path to Who-Knows-Where. The whole time I was there, most of the faculty and other students helped me facilitate ideas that I brought to the table, and told me whether or not it was realistic, that I actually could pursue things that I was interested in, so that later when people told me things like, “You can’t,” I could answer in all confidence, “Are you crazy!? Sure I can!”

Getting back to my story, I think you may be able to deduce what happened in my pursuit of being the next William-Adolphe Bouguereau. I went into the Upper School Art Studio day after day during lunch, and I painted. In her free time, Mrs. M taught me the proper way to sketch in the academic style, and then create an under painting, carefully choosing the right color-opposites, and then how to gradually layer the paints, building up the lights, and deepening the shadows. I ended up making a really great picture. Although it wasn’t anywhere close to a Bouguereau, it was technically the best painting I’d ever done. Mrs. M was right. I saw that if I kept practicing, I could actually improve and eventually learn how to paint just like Bouguereau. But somehow, that didn’t feel quite right…

You see, somewhere in the process of increasing my skill level as a painter, something really weird happened. I made lots of little, tiny mistakes, and … I actually liked them. A few brush hairs would be slightly out of place, and a fleck of color ended up somewhere unexpected. And it looked good.
I listened to myself, and I realized that the calculated tedium of painting in the academic style wasn’t at the heart of what I enjoyed in making art. I could admire the perfection of Bouguereau’s work as a viewer, but as an artist, I actually liked the happy accidents, the paint drips and smudges, really diving into a blank canvas, and seeing where it would take me, and what it could teach me.

In failing to be a 19th century master of academic painting, I came closer to what interested me as an artist. I painted more, but started to paint really differently. Letting my process guide me, and living in each moment of creation, I allowed various types of media to take hold of my hand, my mind and my heart. I’m now working in a wide range of media, everything from digital video, to printmaking, to site-specific installations. And I’ve had some successes. I’ve shown my work at the Carnegie and Warhol Museums, at art fairs and galleries in Manhattan and Brooklyn and Pittsburgh. My work has taken me to Haiti and to India. I’ve sold my work, and received grant funding for my projects. As it turned out, I’ve never once shown a painting. And folks, for every one of those successes, I’ve failed or been rejected countless times.

So, surprise, surprise, I didn’t become the next William-Adolphe Bouguerueau. In fact, I didn’t even come close. But – I became a better Lizzy De Vita because trying and technically failing taught me something more about what kind of artist I really wanted to be, and set me more firmly on the path of being who I am today, and who I’ll become in the future. Failing helped me learn, and become a better me.

Once, an artist that I admired said to me that as an artist you are defined more by what you cannot do than by what you can. I think this advice does not just apply exclusively to artists, in that our shortcomings and mistakes, things that we cannot plan for, did not intend, are actually cues – little GPS markers on the path of finding who we are. That is, if we’re willing to see them as such.

It’s great to know that you have amazing potential, and from what I’ve heard about this class, I am sure that each and every one of you has much to contribute to the world. But, as I mentioned before, embedded in any potential is the potential to fail. Be open to it, and don’t let it get you down. You really never know when something that initially reads as a failure will set you on a trajectory that is truer, clearer, weirder, maybe even better than any sort of path you could have dreamed up yourself.

In these months moving forward, before and after your graduation, and in the years and decades that follow, my hope for all of you is that you will have the courage to see all the things that life has to teach you, at the best and the worst of times, and that you will have the grace to accept those teachings – and grow. Graduating from Ellis will be one of many triumphs in the life ahead of you, of this I am sure. You will take inspiring classes, meet amazing people, travel to exotic places. And you will learn things.

You will also have bad dates, heartbreaks, gruesome gaffes, mechanical missteps, mental miscalculations, and…insurance disputes. And you will learn things.

All of this “educational” experience will pay of in the sense that it will contribute to your finding your place in the great, weird, wonderful world that is before you. Experiences of all kinds, if you are open to them, listen to them, and learn from them will help you on the long and not-always-easy path that lies ahead. But, you know – you CAN do it. You are, after all, an Ellis girl.
Good luck, congratulations, and happy learning!