ARTIST MANiFESTO

I do not create to impress.
I’ve lived too many lives for that.

I create to scratch at the surface of this world until the bones of truth show through.

My art will not wait its turn.
It stumbles barefoot on earth, mud between toes, heartbeat in the soil.

I gather the discarded.
The unwanted.

The left-behind.

The forgotten.
Bones, dead leaves, stones no one would glance at twice — except me.

My hands are spells.
They remember things I haven’t told my mind yet.

I am not here to climb ladders.
I am here to dig.
To root.
Deep down in lava, where ancestors hum and stories still burn.

I create for those
who speak to crows,
who come alive during thunderstorms,
who carry softness like a blade, and silence like a drum.

I am a weaver of the in-between — forgotten and awake.

I do not owe the world anything.
I offer rawness and truth.

This is my altar.
This is my resistance.
This is my return.

I will not shrink.
I will not tame.

I will not be tamed by the world that fears what it cannot name.

As Gaia’s student, with fire on my hands and stars in my chest,
I say this with breath and bone:

I am not done!

Nilay Carlson