zestasià_and_friends: presents Triston Alblas

It is that time of the month again, my fellow friends. This month's guest is one of my very first bookstagram friends and I am so excited for you guys to read the brilliance he has written.

I cannot find the words to introduce him well enough so I asked Tris to write a little about himself and I'm sure by this you guys will see how epic he is :) By the way, the stuff in italics is me speaking because I can't help myself from fangirling!

"I am Triston (Most call me Tris) and I am a book and pop culture enthusiast! I also run the bookstagram @booktris ( honestly, his feed is so pretty \(￣︶￣*\)) ) and a make-shift "don't judge me I'm trying" blog on WordPress! When I'm not reading or talking about books I am busy working on my novel (I'm excited to hear about this omg) or designing characters in my sketchbook!

I am 21 yrs old, and am the proud parent of a Husky/Collie who's name is Willow and she is a giant ball of energy that brightens up any day! (She really is adorable you guys (/▽＼) )

I am also currently doing my Bachelor's in Psychology and Counselling (WOOP WOOP!) while working in a Bookstore! I am a huge advocate for Diversity and Mental Health. Other than that, I am queer, a Ravenclaw (YES RAVENCLAWS UNITE) and according to the outdated Jung an INFP! My pronouns are He/Him and His! And for anyone whose interested I am an Aquarius!"

Yep, no way I could have introduced him well enough. If you thought his introduction was great, wait until you read what he has written for this months edition of zestasià_and_friends because it is just so friggin' heartwarming!!!

So without further adieu, here is Triston's piece of art... on art :)

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What Art Means to Me

“Eleanor was right. She never looked nice. She looked like art, and art wasn't supposed to look nice; it was supposed to make you feel something.”

― Rainbow Rowell, Eleanor & Park

(Please note that in this essay, I use the word “art” interchangeably to refer to Drawing, writing and other forms art and culture I am interested in.)

Have you ever looked at a photograph, a painting or piece of poetry and just felt an overwhelming feeling that you can’t describe. Your chest swells and it feels like your body is slowly filling with some intense and emotional feeling. That feeling that you felt right there in that moment is only a fraction of what the artist felt while making the art you are looking at.

Art has always been a recurring and overpowering theme in my life for as long as I can remember. When I was younger my mom would give me a pencil and a piece of paper and you wouldn’t see me for hours, as I was filling the page with everything that my imagination could conjure. My whole life I have always been drawn to the more artistic things in life, from writing to drawing, to the art of capturing a moment in a photograph. I have never, and still don’t consider myself a great artist, or a professional. I mean, I draw a

picture in a cartoon style with over and under exaggerated proportions, and nearly everything is inconsistent. But art for me has never been something I wanted to be the best at or something I had to perfect, it has simply just been my escape for as long as I can remember.

For a large part of my life, I have dealt with Anxiety. My mom first started picking up the symptoms when I was around what can be described as my “tween” years. And then later when I got older it manifested into a type of depression. And for me, art was the only way to cope.

Through art, I could escape. And not only my own art, but other people’s art too, whether it be short stories on Tumblr and Wattpad, or my own stories in my journal, or the latest Cassandra Clare book. Whether it was a page I filled with thick strokes of graphite, or the fanart I found on Pinterest, art has always been a way for me to cope with the tangled and knotted mess that was going on in my head. Though admittedly, in between the bustle of school and the pressures of a world that expects unrealistic means of the youth that is detrimental to not only mental health but also self-esteem, there wasn’t always time to escape into the world of art.

For months at a time, I would just leave behind the thing that has always been

most important to me, to pursue things that the people around me wanted for me. It got to a point where escaping to the worlds of stories and graphite pencil would actually make me feel guilty. And I will always regret that, because where I could have been working on things I actually cared about and getting better at the thing I wanted to get better at, I was wasting my time trying to do sport or trying to be in the honour roll at school, things I genuinely did not want for me, but what friends and family expected from me. (BTW school is important, I’m not saying it’s not, but sometimes you gotta be happy with a 75%, you don’t have to have that 95%, don’t set challenging goals for yourself unless it is important to you, set the challenging goals that you want to achieve).

Then I finished matric with four distinctions, which I am proud of, don’t get me wrong. But for the life of me, I did not want to study engineering. So I took a gap year, for my mental health and to get myself together. And in that year I returned to art, I got back into the thing that has always been most important to me, and that was art.

In that year I decided to slowly start teaching myself to draw again, and I wrote terrible poetry, and I read more books in that year than I ever had in my entire life. What I had found was, that I read a lot of books that deeply resonated with me and a lot of them dealt with Mental Health, and subconsciously that has always been something I was curious and interested about.

I found out that a lot of my favourite authors has studied psychology, for example, Becky Albertalli, and John Green, I found out, studied Theology with a minor in Psychology. I then started doing research on Psychology, and my brain fell into a whirlpool, I watched every one of Hank Greens SciShow videos on Psychology and by the end of the year, I knew that I wanted to make a career of this one day.

That year, I also started my bookstagram page (@booktris) where I tried my hand at taking amateur photos of books (Bookstagram is an art and if you disagree then you are simply just wrong). My page had a rough start, but I gradually got into it and now I have a semi-successful page and have met the most amazing friends and people that will forever be important to that I hold dear to my heart. And finally, I started drawing again, I still

have times in my life when it gets busy with work and school where I don’t draw for a while, but I always return to it.

Because even if I am not as talented as Charlie Bowater or Alice Oseman, I love doing it and therefore will continue doing it, and who knows maybe I do release a graphic novel or do the art for my work in progress novel one day. Art was, and always will be the thing in my life that inspires me the most, makes me happy, helps me escape and though many deny it, has the ability to change the world.

Whether it be Amateur drawings, writing bad poetry, writing a messy novel, a rough starting bookstagram page, or a blog you only update once every 4 months. If it matters to you, it is important. I would love to know what forms of art you spend your time on, let me know and we can chat!

-Triston (@booktris)

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I'd like to point out that Triston does not give himself enough credit because he is super talented and we stan talent!!!!

Be sure to check out his Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/booktris/) as well as his Instagram dedicated to his artwork (https://www.instagram.com/amateur.art.tris/) and well, as he said, please share what art forms you indulge in in the comment section below :)

Until next time, don't forget to sprinkle kindness wherever you go!!

-zestasià

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