My mother is a painter (this is my mom:SylviaCorban.com) and my father’s bachelor’s degree is in chemistry. I got it honest.

Since childhood, I have always been encouraged to develop as an artist. Being from a middle class family on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, I was also encouraged to learn to play the piano. (That’s what ladies from Mississippi do, you see.) Mamma always told me that she thought I was really a sculptor though, but I got into this jazz thing and sculpting still remains to be seen in my professional body of work.

Anyway, I was a well-adjusted kid in High School. I went to church with my family, was a football cheerleader, in the student council, acted in the class plays. I even won the Jr Miss County pageant. Won the talent competition too – played my guitar and sang Heart’s Dog & Butterfly (BTW, Does anybody know what that song means? I just thought it was pretty.) I received some music scholarships from the pageant and before I knew it, I was heading off to college to be music major.

Six months later, while living in a dormitory, I met a girl in the elevator that was from the same area of the coast. So I hitched a ride with her to get back home to see my Mom and Dad for Thanksgiving.

I guess it was probably around noon the next day that I was ejected through the windshield of her car.

The dashboard had snapped my femur bone as I was plummeted out of the vehicle. The doctors were probably more concerned with the cranial pressure from the severe concussion though so my leg really wasn’t a high priority. A shunt was drilled into my skull to drain the fluid.

Doctors told my parent’s that I wouldn’t make it. Ten days past.

I don’t really remember any thing until about three months later. Wrapped up in a body cast in my parent’s king size bed, I remember someone handing me a mirror. There were huge chunks out of my nose and skin missing above my mouth. I was also bald. There were slashes across my forehead. I only had one eyebrow.

The Neurosurgeon told my parents that one day I would be normal again. Then he left Mississippi to go to another hospital…somewhere else.

No one told Mom and Dad how long “being normal” would take. We had no idea that I needed re-habilitation…because I could talk. And after my femur bone was re-broken, set, and healed…I could walk. A plastic surgeon re-constructed my face…then I looked “normal.”

But I couldn't read. Words would turn around, as I would try to decipher their meaning; the letters would jumble up on the page. I didn’t tell anyone because I was ashamed. I couldn’t read a whole book until 7 yrs after the accident.

I didn’t sleep. AT ALL. This problem followed me for the next ten years.

Untitled oil on canvas

A year after the accident, when I tried to attend college again, I had ZERO self-esteem. Kids from my former pier group would tell me…”Joely, you’ve changed.” That of course made it even worse.

I went to a larger university closer to my parents. I began a series of out patient surgeries, and studied music. Music is what I was studying before the car wreck. But I only stayed for 4 semesters (time seemed to creep as an undergraduate.) I thought that a bachelor’s degree in music would probably only get me a job as a music teacher…in Mississippi. And hey, nobody’s in Mississippi...just some "nobody" artists...musicians...writers...painters...nothing ever happens down here in the middle of nowhere.

Before the car wreck, I had started singing and playing my guitar in rock bands. I decided that maybe if I moved to a big city and went to a school that taught popular music that I would find my self-confidence again? Maybe be discovered! Discovered doing what, I hadn’t figured that out…but I knew that I was a bundle of talent and all of those people from my past at that university weren’t doing me any good. I chose Atlanta, a half a day drive home from my family. I was 20 yrs old.

I lived in Atlanta for two and a half years. I played bass and sang in a rock band. My songs were aired on college radio stations. I sold my paintings in coffee shops.

I met different types of people from different types of places that had accents I’d never heard and told stories that I wanted to believe. I took odd jobs to make ends meet. I was hired to be an usher for Cirque du Soli. I chain smoked Camel cigarettes and drank like a fish. Alcohol helped me sleep.

Cirque Before the Storm oil on canvas

Sold to a Private Collector

My grandmother called me one night just as my circus adventures were beginning. She had just been to the doctor and had discovered a benign lump that had to be removed from her neck. She told me, “Joely, why don’t you come home and go back to college. Casinos are popping up down here, and you could get a job in one and finish your degree.” She died a few days later.

I did move back to Mississippi in hopes of completing my bachelor’s degree. No “scene.” No music. This time, I began my studies in drawing and painting at a local community college. I got a portfolio together and applied for art school in Memphis.

I was accepted into Memphis College of Art and awarded a scholarship. However, I did not look at the work that was being produced a MCA at that time. I needed to be with my cousin who was suffering from the latter stages of AIDS.

I thought I could play music with a group of friends that I had known in Atlanta that had also moved to Memphis.

I had personal reasons for attending MCA... However, if I would have researched, then I might have chosen to attend a more classical academy that focused on technique rather than egocentric rhetoric.

The first semester that I attended Memphis College of Art, I landed my first big commission. I did an instillation mural for a private collector, that paid me oh-so-handsomely for my work. That same semester, I also discovered that my friends from Cirque du Soli were going to be playing in Amsterdam the following spring. Low and behold…MCA was planning a trip to Amsterdam to see a Vermier exhibit the following spring as well. The sheer coincidence…now that’s Quantum Physics.

I had stayed in touch with some of the people that played with the Cirque. When I contacted them, they gave me a list of people they knew in Amsterdam that lived in the city so I would have a safe place to live and still be able to get around. (Apparently, none of the hotels in Amsterdam would take my Cirque friends back.)

I want to add here that Amsterdam (minus my French speaking circus friends) is a BIG money trap. The beers are crazy expensive and I don't even like Heineken. I never saw a hooker either. I guess it was because I wan't looking for one. In fact, I thought that the women walking around in cheep tight clothes were probably with a band playing somewhere. I just thought they were groupies!

See, no matter where you go...there you are. Your the same person no matter what insane opportunity is thrown your way...and I'll also add that one needn't accept every opportunity.

If you want to see"truth"...go to the Van Gough museum in Amsterdam.

Anyway, I went to Amsterdam with other students from the art school but did not return with them. I stayed with the Cirque in Amsterdam another 10 days. Alas…my adventures with Cirque du Soli did prove nearly fatal to my undergraduate grade point average.

After I returned to Memphis, and showed my sketchbooks from my adventure, the instructors replied, “Work on composition and line quality.” I received “C’s” in all of my classes.

I began studying Chinese calligraphy, Japanese wood block prints, and African sculptures. I’d learned in my history class that these were some of the elements that inspired artist to create “new” art in the twentieth century.

I turned in my sketchbooks and showed my paintings to instructors at the art school again…and again they replied, “You need to work on your composition and line quality. Oh, and by the way, that painting is too blue.”

Too what? After another semester of empty talk, I began to wonder if maybe they were giving me canned answers? Owing the government twenty-two thousand dollars in student loans, I decided to drop out.

I began hanging out with comic book artists in Memphis to learn about “Composition.” I hung out at their studios and learned a little about their trade. I made friends with tattoo artist. I tried to copy some of their influences. Different ways to execute a “Line.”

I would sit in and sing blues and jazz standards with a band at a BBQ shack in Midtown sometimes... “Composition."

I still couldn’t sleep. Did these men have my best interest at hand? Knowing that it would soon be time to repay those federal student loans, I went back home to live with Mamma and Daddy.

I still didn’t have a degree, didn’t have any job skills, and thinking back…I probably looked pretty weird…sort of like I’d just walked out of an animated feature film.

Mural on Jeff Davis Ave, Long Beach, MS January, 1999	Mural on Jeff Davis Ave, detail

I began singing jazz standards in coffee shops and worked on my repitua. I rehearsed for hours and performed for pennies. There really wasn’t/aren’t a whole lot of venues for strait ahead jazz on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

I couldn’t find any steady work, so I began doing children’s portraits for cash. I painted a public mural on the main street of my home town “pro bono” for the Historical Society in hopes of getting some recognition for my portrait business. My portraits were pretty expressive at this time though; I really think I may have frightened some young mothers.

The student loan bills started coming in. I really couldn’t sleep now.

It had been 10 years since the car accident. I was living with my parents and I had no job. I had no intimate relationships. I owed the government twenty two thousand dollars.

I had begun to slowly read again.

I decided to go back to the community college and take some academic courses to get my degree from a traditional college. That would at least put Uncle Sam off for another couple of years. I took literature, history, sociology, and algebra.

I graduated from William Carey University in 2001 with a Bachelors of Fine Art. WCU is a private university sponsored by the Southern Baptist Convention. All undergraduates are required to complete one full semester of the Holy Bible’s Old Testament and on full semester of the New Testament.

God Into Jackson Square, August '05 oil on canvas, Sold to a Private Collector

During my formal academic studies of the Bible, I began to seek out a community of people to worship God and learn of Christ’s teachings together.

I had been baptized as a child in a Southern Baptist church. But I also had grown up in the Catholic Church. A lot of my childhood friends were Roman Catholic and when we had slumber parties, their mothers would make us all go to Catholic Youth Organization meetings the next morning. Plus all the cool dances were with the CYO. Baptist kids just ate and prayed…we never got to turn the lights out like the Catholic kids.

On St. Patrick’s Day, 2001, Bishop Duncan Grey confirmed me as an Episcopalian at St. Patrick’s Episcopal Church in Long Beach, MS. I made a little Anglican Rosarie, got a priest to Bless it, and I asked God to help me say and do what He wants me to. I asked God to give me the job that He has for me.

In the months that followed, I began singing in the choir and painting banners, candle guards, and runners. I also began a through four-year Bible and Theology study with a group called Education For Ministry. We drank wine, ate great food and discussed Theology and Church history beginning with St Paul. It was fun.

Alter Candel Gaurd for St Patrick's Episcopal Church, Blessed Easter Sunday, 2001

It was after one of these meetings that a fellow student asked if I could teach Photoshop at an adjunct campus that Tulane University was opening in Biloxi .I responded, “Of course I can, but I don’t have a masters degree!” She replied, “You don’t need a master's to teach a training course.”

The only work that I had been able to get after my degree was freelance graphic design stuff. Fine Art sales were pretty hit or miss.

She gave me the number and email address to the director of the program. We met at a Sushi restaurant and had a lovely discussion concerning "The Power of Knowledge." After informing me that it was okay to hire a graduate student…the director offered me a job.

In tern, due to SACS accreditation, I applied for Graduate School – having no idea what level of a master’s degree I wanted to pursue. (There are different levels.) I enrolled in a Saturday course called Festival Management at the University of New Orleans.

I began teaching Intro to Digital Imagery at Tulane’s Biloxi adjunct campus. I commuted to New Orleans to teach Intro to Graphic Design and to take my Graduate course at UNO.

Did I mention that I had begun singing jazz standards again at this time? After teaching my Monday night Intro to Graphic Design course at the Downtown adjunct campus in New Orleans, I would sit in and sing with musicians in after hour jazz clubs.

I was busy; I got my first grey hair, but I really learned a lot.

I continued this commute for 2 years. Then, I decided that I really did need health insurance.

I asked God to put me in the place that He willed.

Banner for St Patrick's Episcopal Church, acrylic on unstreached canvas

I had finally been treated for my closed head injury 15 years before, and doctors were prescribing me medication that cost nearly $300 a month. At the time, because I had recieved no rehabilitation after my TBI back in '88, the state assisted me with my medication. However, if I were to be an educator, then I needed a Masters degree. And if I was gonna get a Masters then it would need to be the highest level so that a university would consider me for a full time position...a Masters of Fine Art.

I got a job as a graphic designer at a television station in south Jackson, near Clinton, MS. They had some 3D animation software that I wanted to learn and I felt like this was a good chance to be "out in the middle of nowhere" to get a portfolio together. I also started calling around to the different universities and colleges to find out about their graduate programs.

I was immediately offered an assistantship at Jackson State University. Jackson State is a Historically Black University and since I'm white (a minority at JSU), I could go for free. I was given a stipend and free classes towards a Master of Science in Education.

I designed and launched the JSU's Graduate school web site. I researched Black history in Mississippi. I taught a graduate level course in Flash Animation.

At home in Clinton, I was busy doing pastel paintings. I heard through the grapevine that a small private college a few blocks from my apartment, had a Masters of Fine Art program. I walked down the street to the College with pastel paintings in my portfolio case and met the department chair.

Skyscape II pastel on paper

Another fabulous "coincidence"...Mississippi College required two semesters of graduate level pastel painting in their 2D MFA program...tell me that's not Quantum...Thank you, Jesus.

In the spring of 2007, I graduated Summa Cum Laudi with an MFA from Mississippi College. 19 years before I could not read. Portions of my MFA thesis are currently being submitted to the National Art Education Association for publication.

I am an academic with street credibility. If I can do it, so can you