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Katherine (Kat) Finck — She’s not letting go any time soon. If you have art, art has you. (Photo credit Eric Obery, West Side Graphics)

I first met Katherine (Kat) Finck back before the turn of the century in my capacity as an épée coach with the South Shore Duellists Fencing Club where I had the great pleasure both of fencing her, and contributing in my own small way to cultivation of her innate killer instincts. Of all the firsts in my life, it delights me to tell you that she is the first, and only, person I’ve ever met who literally ran off to join the circus.

Now an accomplished aerialist, juggler, co-founder of Circus Maine and the Maine Circus Academy, in actuality, her path to circus wasn’t quite so linear as that. You can gain insight into the Esteemed Katherine by way of the excellent article Always Circus written by Anna E. Jordan, and published by Maine Women Magazine in March of this year. Even with the flaw due to a misconception that Katherine is a native of Montreal (she’s from the almost equally glamorous Barss Corner, Nova Scotia), the piece otherwise transcends that to beautifully illustrate what it means to be an Artist, which brings me to my reason for calling this to your attention today.

Katherine providing spousal support to husband Joshua Oliver. (Photo credit: Casey Jacques)

To embrace any creative endeavour is to become intimate with a fundamental force of Nature. In parts compulsion, calling, hunger, need, done properly and well the act of Creation is aimed at producing the ultimate act of deception, for in the eyes and mind of the beholder, the audience, the reader, the listener, it must be what it is not — effortless.

In one of the most perfect descriptions of this Truth I have ever witnessed, the article quotes Katherine:

“When you are so busy, sometimes it’s easy to forget that art is more important than air. So you prioritize everything before the thing that’s more important than air … Creation looks like rolling around on the floor. Creation looks like staring at the wall. Creation looks like absolutely bullshit. It looks nothing. It looks like garbage. It looks like a waste of time. So if there are other things that need to get done ….”

Whatever the Art, it will always come down to this, and I believe it to be more a part of the process than it is an impediment to it. Whatever the Art, as she also says, “There’s no hours where you are a circus artist and hours that you aren’t a circus artist. You just always are circus.”

If you are serious about your Art Goode Reader, take the Esteemed Katherine’s advice and always be circus.