>> Jara Lang: Hi,
I'm Jara Fatout Lang.
I'm a retired Air Force veteran.
I spent 21 and a half
years in the Air Force,
working in the science
and technology industry.
I did a lot of protecting bugs
and bunnies from chemicals
and bombs and things like that,
and then later on in my career,
I did a lot of working
with senior leaders
to develop communication
about new technologies.
And my last assignment,
which was one
of my favorite assignments,
I got to work
as an Air Force ROTC detachment
commander in Fort Worth,
Texas at Texas Christian
University.
Working with young adults
as they were entering
into their Air Force
careers in teaching
and guiding them was
incredibly rewarding and one
of my favorite experiences.
After 21 years, and at the
end of that assignment,
that just because there
was not much of a future
in the career field I was in
and I didn't want to
face a deployment.
I was a single mom.
At that time, it was just not
feasible, and fortunately,
I was at 21 and a half years,
and so I got to exit service
in full retirement,
which was incredible.
And I went right into the
defense contract industry,
writing proposals for
big contracts for one
of the defense contractors.
It was a very steep,
stressful learning curve,
and I spent a year trying to
understand and learn quickly.
Came in one morning and
without warning got laid off,
based on my education,
which was,
I have two master's degrees,
21 years' experience
in the Air Force.
I was getting paid
a lot of money
to do what I didn't have a lot
of direct experience to do,
so it really made sense to
lay me off, but at that time,
it was very, very traumatic,
and my young daughter,
she was 14 at the time.
We had a long conversation,
and I said, "Well, Gracie,
I can continue on in this
corporate world, and I can try
to find a commensurate job
at another company,
but I'm not happy."
And Gracie said, "Mom, I
don't care about the money.
I don't care about the things.
What I care about is you.
I care -- when you're
happy, I'm happy."
So she said, "Let's do
what we need to do."
And I said, "Well, it's going to
involve giving up the big house
and the beautiful
cars and the pool --
swimming pool, and we're
going to have to downsize
because mom thinks she wants
to try to be an artist,
and we're not going
making money doing that."
And she was like,
"I'm 100% behind you.
What can I do to help get
the house ready to sell?"
So that's what I did, and
I started taking classes
at a community college,
and I fell in love with it.
So for the last five years,
that's what I've been doing,
drawing and painting and
I do it because I love it.
It is also a second
career attempt for me,
so powerful learning
curve for me.
There's lots and lots
of ups and downs.
You see a lot of rejection,
especially this early
in an artist's career, so
I'm competing against people
who have been drawing and
painting since they were
in their teens, competing
against people
who have bachelor's degrees and
master's degrees in fine art,
and I'm, aside from a few
classes at a community college,
self-taught, and I've only
been doing it for a few years.
So I have a lot of growth to do,
but they always say, you know,
miles behind the
paintbrush is what you need,
and that's what I do.
One of the other things
that I struggle with is
in the fine art community
right now, it's very respected
to have very message-based
art, so a lot of people start
with a deep and meaningful
message, and then they turn
that into art, and I'm sort
of the other way around.
I start with what
I find beautiful,
and something inside me tells
me I want to reproduce that.
I'm at Lowe's or Home Depot,
and I'm shopping and I see a pot
of hydrangeas and I think
they're just gorgeous.
I'll take 20 pictures of those
hydrangeas and I'll come home,
search through those
pictures, and then suddenly one
of them jumps out at me and says
that has to become a drawing,
and that's how I operate.
And my style is very
photorealistic,
and that's how I operate,
and I love what I do,
and I think that
that's important.
And organizations like Uniting
Us are very important for people
like me, because without Uniting
Us, I would feel a little bit
like on an island alone but
out there with Uniting Us,
I recognize and know that
my story is important,
my art is important, and there's
a community of people out there
like me who are using art
as a significant contributed
to their life, their value,
their perception of their value
in life, and what we produce
is important to other people
in the same regard, and Uniting
Us brings us all together,
brings people who are making
art, people who need art,
people who appreciate art as
part of our healing process
and part of our validation as
we move through whatever phase
in life we have to do.