The GGA Project -- Day #337 "On Women, On Inspiration"

Today I decided to tag along to an event my Mom had been talking about in recent weeks.  It was a gathering of women artists and artisans, which sounded like a pretty amazing way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

Today's New Activity: Attending 33rd Annual Celebration of Craftswomen

Ok, first of all: Fort Mason!  What the hell?  How is it that I've never heard of this place or all the interesting businesses and buildings housed therein?!  As was the case when I first visited The Presidio a few months back, I found myself impressed with and enchanted by the cityfolks' repurposing of an old military site.  There was a ton going on there today--including some kind of chocolate extravaganza that I would SO have gotten in on if the entry fee weren't $20, as well as what is apparently a weekly farmer's market where a very talented singer songwriter was performing (wish I'd caught her name) and a food booth called Chaac-Mool was serving insanely yummy Yucatecan food (not that I have a lot to compare it to).  But anyway, we weren't there for all that...

The Celebration of Craftswomen was held at Fort Mason's Festival Pavilion, which sat right next to the water and which seemed to be nothing more than an old hangar (but a beautiful one at that).

As soon as we walked in I could feel the energy in there.  And it wasn't long before I saw some beautiful works of art.

First, the intricate embroidery work by Yan Inlow, each piece taking months to complete (I wish I had pictures of all this stuff to share...I feel really weird about taking photos of things people are there to sell.  Follow the links if you'd like to see the work!)

Then beautiful, unique, just-my-taste jewelry from Daria Salus, Serena Kojimoto, Erika Honig, and Amy Faust.  My favorite jewelry artist there, Birgitt Hellemann, doesn't have a website :(  

Then there were the beautiful mosaic pieces by Stephanie Bugbee, and just so many more.  There were women who worked with wood, leather, acrylics, glass, textiles, paper, and every metal you can imagine, as well as some very, very good photographers.

Which brings me to Dona Bollard.  I really wish this incredibly talented woman had a better website (actually, I wish ALL these women had better websites.  I think they would sell a lot more of their art and/or jewelry if people were allowed to peruse their work at their own paces and without the time-limited stress of making big art-purchasing decisions at one-day events).  The images on her site don't begin to do justice to the experience of walking up to one of her photographs in person.  I'm telling you if the energy of a photograph could make the subject walk off a page, her subjects would dance.

A lot of her work featured horses, and that stuff was gorgeous, but what really grabbed me were the images of women.  Only twice in my life have I had the experience of glimpsing a piece of art and being moved to tears.  Once was when I came upon Michelangelo's Pieta in St. Peter's Basilica in Vatican City.  The second happened today, when I came upon this photograph in Dona Bollard's booth.

The photographer was very warm, engaging, and generous with her time.  I told her the effect the photograph had on me and she said others have reported having similar feelings.  We talked about possible interpretations of the piece and the reasons people might feel as they do, and I shared that there was nothing at all interpretive or intellectual about my reaction.  It was a pure emotional response, and to what I'm still not quite sure.  I just knew it was one of the most beautiful images I'd ever seen and that--though it was difficult to look at in the beginning (I swear it brought tears to my eyes every time!)--I knew I wanted to be able to look at it again and again.  I bought a print.

Encountering the work of and meeting Dona Bollard was the highlight of my day.  After talking with her for a while, I shared a bit about my recent life events and my thoughts on why I connected with this photo as I did.  She was the kind of person you could just meet and then stand there and cry with minutes later.

She lives in New Mexico, and she talked about how brutal the past year has been for artists there.  Where she used to be able to sell plenty of pieces without ever leaving her hometown, the lean last year has forced her to spend a lot of time on the road at shows like today's.  I told her I was so grateful that there are still artists like her even trying to make a living creating art, especially since, as she said was true of many of her artist friends, many people are doing all they can just to get by...taking time away from work to create art and then hope to sell it seems like a risk too big to take.

I really feel like I was supposed to meet and be inspired by this woman and a number of the other artists whose work I took in.  It's just so good to know that there are still true artisans out there, honing their skills and dreaming up images and designs for NO OTHER PURPOSE than to express something and to add beauty to the world.  I mean yes, they are selling their work, so there is another purpose.  But these were women who were clearly born to create.  I'm glad they're putting their creations out there for the rest of us to enjoy.

Also--something to feel good about: the entrance fee to the show went to benefit The Women's Building, a non-profit in San Francisco "providing women and girls with the tools and resources for full and equal participation in society."

It was a beautiful, inspiring day, all the way around...

The GGA Project -- Day #273 "Artsy (not so) Fartsy"

My friend Laura Calling Bennett is a gifted artist.  I've mentioned her here before because it always seems if there's some cool art event I've found myself at, it had something to do with her.  So it was with


Today's New Activity: Exhibit Opening at Firehouse North


The Firehouse North, in Berkeley, is a very small gallery.  That's kind of what I liked about it.  Check out the musicians up top!

I was there because Laura had a few paintings featured in this showing of the Silicon Valley Artists Collaborative, of which she is a member.


I arrived just in time to hear the introduction from Tom Franco, the gallery's director, who looks like he could indeed be related to everyone's favorite modern-day renaissance man, James Franco.  He was friendly and appreciative for the support, and generous in inviting the featured artists who were present to talk a bit about their collaborative and their mission.


I was glad I made it out tonight.  I kind of had to force myself into it since by the time evening rolled around I was tired and starting to feel a little bit lonely.  Going to this opening, at a gallery I'd never been to before and by myself, seemed to only have the chance of highlighting that lonely feeling coming on.  And it did just that.  I was heavy with a kind of sadness I rarely feel, and being out among people in pairs and groups caused me to feel, at times, awkward and self conscious.  But those are feelings I tend to be able to talk myself out of, on good days.  And though I didn't feel comfortable enough sticking around to try and mingle and make conversation, I left the gallery feeling better than I'd felt when I got there.  I considered that a success of sorts.  And I was feeling content enough to spend the next two hours writing at Starbucks before heading home.


One other reason I was grateful for having attended tonight (as I have been grateful for many of these new activities) was that it dispelled a myth for me; this time around it happened to be about artists/gallery openings.  I was honestly a little worried I would be dressed all wrong for the event and surrounded by super cosmopolitan people who knew loads of stuff about art and would make me feel like the newb/n00b (a word that is relatively new to me (thanks for breaking it down, Brian, but that is the perfect, perfect word.  I almost feel like it could be an onomatopoeia, representing the sound of humiliation your brain makes when you realize you are totally unqualified for, just, everything) that I am in that department.  But no such thing happened.  It seems people who attend gallery openings are just people after all.  And they weren't dressed any special way or holding their wine cups (humble plastic ones) in some especially sophisticated way.  I won't have second thoughts about attending another one in the future.  :)

The GGA Project -- Day #222 "Polish Booty"

As I've mentioned before, my friend Nicole is a brilliant all-around artist.  She is the queen of making something cool out of the least likely materials, and she is forever adding new tricks to her repertoire.


One thing she does pretty frequently is to participate in swaps organized by various bloggers she follows, most of them artists.  For example, a few months ago she participated in a vintage sheet swap, wherein each participant collected a few vintage sheets and then cut them into quilt-sized squares.  They all sent them to the organizers, who split them up such that each participant received, in return, a large variety of quilt squares to use in quilting (duh) or whatever else their agile, artistic minds could dream up.


A lot of times the swaps involve paper goods, which is perfect since Nicole does a lot of art journaling and papercrafting.  A swap she mentioned a couple of months ago intrigued me and made me want to try it out for the first time, too.  So I e-mailed the organizer of this swap to get in on the action.  The theme was International ephemera.  You were to gather various pamphlets, ads, newspapers, etc, from your home town and swap them with somebody in another country.  Nevermind the why...artsy people think of things to do with this stuff.  I just thought it would be cool to receive a package from another country full of stuff printed in another language.  The woman I was matched with, Michelle, is from Poland (check out her blog, full of a variety of cool projects!).  We agreed on a time to swap the goods, and two weeks ago I sent off a package full of everything I could collect that seemed cool enough to send overseas.


Today's New Activity: Swap Circle Complete


Today, I received Michelle's package in the mail.

I wish I could read the newspapers included, because I would love to know what the man on the front page of this one has been accused of, but no matter...it's still interesting to look at.  And I especially like the vintage-looking country map she included.


We also agreed to swap one homemade thing, so I sent along a pendant I made and she sent me this little fabric doll who came in her own little sleeping bag-type pouch.

I'll probably end up giving all the paper goods to Nicole since I know she can make good use of it, but I definitely would like to participate in another swap in the future.  It was fun to spend the month thinking about this unknown person in another country and collecting things to send her, all the while wondering what would come my way from her.  Thanks for letting me in on this, Nika!!

The GGA Project -- Day #183 "Surprise History Lesson"

A few weeks back I was talking to my Bro on the phone and he mentioned there was something he wanted to do while he was up here.  Since we were all game for anything and didn't already have plans, his idea became


Today's New Activity: Visiting The Oakland Museum of California

One thing I love about museums is that even their entrance ways are interesting.  And I was sure to capture those since I wouldn't be taking (m)any pictures inside.

The below are bird feeders...

The OMCA, as it is somewhat awkwardly referred, turned out to be quite a nice surprise.  We only managed one of three pretty large galleries (well, my Dad powered through all three but I was lagging), but that galleray alone exhibited enough to make the visit plenty worthwhile.


The reason my Bro wanted to go was that he'd read in the L.A. Times about a SoCal artist, Michael C. McMillen, whose work was showing in an exhibit called "Train of Thought."  I'd never heard of the artist but a brief read-up on him revealed that when he was a child he used to visit the t.v. sets his father worked on, and at a young age began designing miniatures, models, sets, and--eventually--installation art.


His pieces ranged from a miniature scene like this, which you open a beat-up old screen door to get in to view:

(this is a close-up of what was an old, parked-forever trailer in what was a desert, overrun-with--broken-things/mini-junkyard scene)

To entire buildings installed there in the museum.  One was a small set-like piece which depicted an old motel.  Three of its doors had peepholes which you could peek into and see tiny scenes featuring moving parts like a ceiling fan or a rear window that was actually an aquarium.


Then there was this somewhat haunting piece:

And this, the little hut portion of which you could actually walk up into and sit down in.  A lot of his work featured water (the hotel above is perched precariously on stilts over a small body of water), and all the somewhat unsettling pieces--with their abandoned feel and the sad, muted colors--were made less so (or more so, I guess, depending on where you're coming from) by the sound of trickling water.

I wouldn't normally take pictures inside a museum but I suppose I felt comfortable because these pieces were off in tucked away rooms where I was the only person viewing them at the time.  Of course flash photography is verboten, but I couldn't resist wanting to take home a little bit of McMillen's eerie charm.  Viewing his work made me feel like I was in a Cohen brothers movie...like a little bit Raising Arizona and a whole lot of No Country for Old Men.

Plus I just loved the (lack of) light inside the fixture that seemed like a run-down house boat anchored in a contaminated bay:

A few pieces in McMillen's exhibition also included film elements, all housed in darkened areas where you could sit for however long and take it in.  His work was fascinating and diverse, and I'd love to see more of it.


All that said, however, I was most happy and pleasantly surprised to find a number of works from the photographer Dorothea Lange on exhibit.  You might not know it but you're probably already familiar with Lange's work, the most famous photograph of which is probably this:

During World War II and the Dustbowl, Lange was commissioned by the US Government to document conditions among various classes and groups of disadvantaged people.  Her work in the field was a terribly bitter dose of truth serum to people who realized they'd prefer never to have known what was going on out there.


One image, depicting two small Japanese children with tags around their necks, among many pegged for immediate interment and/or deportation during WWII, was taken right here in Hayward, CA.  In fact all of the images were taken in California, and every piece in the current mainfloor exhibit features California-based artists or artists from elsewhere whose work depicted California.  That's what I loved about the museum.  It is so great to get a glimpse into the history of the state you love calling home.  But that photograph was heart-wrenching, as was so much of Lange's work...how could it have been otherwise, given the nature of the subject matter? 


I happened to be viewing the Lange exhibit while a tour guide was bringing his group through there, so I got to hear some interesting history without having to move along through the *entire* museum at the long-winded guide's snail pace.  I had no idea she was based here in Berkeley or that she was married to artist Maynard Dixon. They eventually divorced after having two sons together, which was almost shocking to learn.  This was back in 1935, when divorce was a major cultural taboo and rarity.  It's really no wonder that an independent and successful woman (who, the tour guide related, had been supporting her artist husband all throughout the marriage--her job was a paying one) took such a bold step, but still it made an impression on me.


It was also interesting to learn that the woman featured in the above photograph, Florence Owens Thompson, had lost her husband a few months before that photograph was taken and that, after seeing the image splashed on the cover of Life magazine and various other print outlets, had written to Lange imploring her to stop printing it.  Lange responded that she was unable to do so, since the photograph was by then the property of the US Government, and I found that unfortunate.  While it is amazing to have this image in our collective national memory as a forever reminder of the difficult times our people have endured, it is unfortunate that it came at the expense of the dignity and privacy of a woman who was doing everything she could to provide for her children.  The week the photo was taken, she'd sold two of the wheels from her family's truck to buy food.


I've always loved Lange's photography, but seeing this body of work and hearing some of her story gave me an a new level of respect for her.  And I was grateful for the chance to get out of my little bubble and spend an afternoon appreciating the creativity of artists spanning three centuries.


If you're ever in the Lake Merritt area of Oakland with 12 extra bucks in your possession, I highly recommend stopping in.

The GGA Project -- Day #174 "Now THAT's What I'm Talkin' About!"

Ahh.  Where to begin talking about


Today's New Activity: Attending the 4th SubZERO Festival


?


A while back I got wind of the SubZERO festival (which I somehow missed during both years when I was living--quite literally--around the corner from where it happened.  I don't know how the funky good vibe alone didn't have me wandering out my front door to find its source), and I've been looking forward to it for weeks.  How thankful I am to report that it didn't go the way of so many of San Jose's outdoor festivals and leave a little to be desired.  How could it with all this action?!

I couldn't get enough of watching this very talented foursome of belly dancers.  I generally love watching belly dancing, and tonight was no exception.  I managed to make it over their way during 4 separate mini-sets.  The drums they danced to were a calling I couldn't refuse.

Next I wandered over to one of the stages, where, for most definitely the first time in my life, I got to hear what happens when hip hop meets the trombone.  This band was just formed last week some time (there was also a female vocalist who isn't pictured here) but you wouldn't have known it with how good they sounded together.

Next, a visit to a traveling curios museum, a mini-version of which was housed in one of the many tents set up on South 1st street, which was blocked off for the festival:

Also among those tents:

a giant cardboard dollhouse with real scenes visible through every window!,

a station where stoppers-by could sit and draw models who switched out in what seemed like five-minute intervals, though some could have been longer (peek and you can see my friend Laura in the second row, doin' her art thang!...she's so cool...).

One stage featured an interpretive dance troupe that was covered in artful, very detailed body paint, and the body paint artist demoed her work live during one band's performance later in the night.  It's too bad all the details can't be made out from the pictures, but this is something of a before and after:

There were food trucks galore.  And though I longed to try the raved-about munchies from Gomo, they (and two other food trucks) were out of their only vegetarian options.  I found my friends Alejandra and Kliff during the food hunt portion of the night, and they both made off with yummy treats.  Hey guys!  It was great to do some catching up with them.  And congrats to Alex on her recent graduation!!

I SO meant to stop by the t-shirt tent of the guys who made Kliff's "Hella" t-shirt so I could finally count myself a bona fida Nor*Cal girl, but I forgot :(  I'll find 'em online.


Music and art were the main focuses of this event, and though I didn't photograph any art for fear the artists would say, "Hey punk, if you like it so much, why don't you BUY it?" (not that they ever would, and not that I'd be opposed to it were it in my budget, but it seemed rude to just go around taking pictures), there was a whole lot of beautiful work to take in.


Around 10pm my best gals Nicole and Kelsi made it, to my shock and glee.  It's SO great to be out with those Mamas, especially in the streets of downtown San Jose, and especially at night.  It reminded me of our earliest adventures in this town, before Mamahood got its wonderful, forever grips on us.  We stopped for coffee and then meandered a bit, seeing:

Bam!  Roller derby demo!  And

Bam!  A yarn bombing!


This is just a very small sampling of all there was to enjoy.  There were art cars and taiko drums, another super fun and energy-filled drum circle, a bicycle joust (!), spoken word, and I even found the tent of one of my bank's customers, who turns out to be quite a talented painter.  And there was so much more.


In the end, Kelsi and I danced to the spinning of a local radio station dj, whose name eludes me right now.  The music was so incredibly happy it was impossible to resist.  I read an article in Details a few months ago about how so much of today's new bands are super happy and bubble gum.  The author was practically lamenting the absence of the angst of rock music past (though not the extreme Emo of more recent past).  I could see the truth in that, if the music this dj played was to serve as any kind of example.  But you know what.  It's freakin' FUN to be happy!!!


Some years ago I was dancing by myself at the salsa stage at San Jose's Jazz Festival.  A Mercury News photographer happened to take a crowd shot that I was visible in, looking as free and happy as a young woman who'd just graduated from college should look.  The picture appeared in the paper twice in articles about the festival.  Dancing tonight I felt the same kind of joy that I see in my face and body language whenever I come across that picture (which is actually only when I visit my brother, who has it pinned to his bulletin board...sweet bro).  My life is not without cares or problems.  And in the past year it is certainly not free from conflict, confusion, or the agonizing act of trying to decipher which is right, of the multiple directions from which to choose.  But in certain moments, and more and more frequently, I am full of that same sense of joy and wonder and absolute knowledge that my life--in the present--is the best possible life I could be living.


Thank you to all the wonderful, talented artists of San Jose and the friends I shared the evening with for bringing me into that place tonight.

The GGA Project -- Day #127 "Room for Art"

My parents recently decided they wanted to switch the room currently used as an office with the bedroom I share with Monkey.  So with the baby out with his Dad today, we spent a full 8 hours moving a whole lot of furniture and odds and ends from one side of the house to the other.  After all that, it's still not done and there's tons of finding of proper places for things still left to be done.


But, I did manage to get the major framework of our new room set up, Monkey's crib reassembled (thanks Dad), and a place set up for me to sleep until we have the assistance needed to move the Murphy bed I sleep on, sometime later this week.


When all the big stuff was done, I had time to assemble and set up a table I'd found last week at Michael's, which I'd bought with the sole intention of making space in my room--and more space in my life--for art.  I've had a lot of fun getting together with my best gals Nicole and Kelsi lately and creating whatever comes to mind for the day.


I thought it would be wonderful to carve out time to do this in my every day life, but there wasn't really a place for it in the house.  The idea of lugging out a bunch of materials every time I got the urge to make something was not appealing, especially since it doesn't fit well with my Mom's love of keeping the house in mint condition, which I alluded to last week ;)


Luckily, the new room we'll be inhabiting is a good bit bigger than the other, which left plenty of room for my new table, which turned from this 

into this 

in the span of an hour and a half or so.  And it also left time for me to put together a table I'd bought for Monkey for the same purpose.


Today's New Activity: Setting Up Monkey/Mama Creative Space


The baby really took to some washable markers and crayons my Mom bought after our first coloring adventures a few months ago.  But I didn't have any suitable place for him to play with those things, on his own level.  I found a good table for him at IKEA last week though, which was the last thing I set up before I went to pick him up.  So when he came home this evening, not only was the whole house different than when he left it, there was a brand new piece of furniture, all for him.


He sat down straight away and started coloring (and to my shock he was putting each crayon back into their little cup before he grabbed the next one).  Such a big boy!

My dream is that he'll sit there, just like that doing his thing, while I sit at my table next to him, doing mine.  And I'm just super happy to have made this a priority.  Now I can write my blogs at the desk once Monkey is asleep, and I can work on any other thing I want to without having to try and tune out whatever's on the t.v. (I notice my blogs rarely make much sense when I try and write them with the t.v. on, and it takes me three times as long to write the nonsensicalness).

And I'm so excited to see what both of us will make :)

The GGA Project -- Day #120 "Doodling with Purpose"

Most people are lucky if they get one solid mother figure and one solid father figure in their lives.  I have been incredibly fortunate in that--in addition to my own wonderful parents--some of my best friends' mothers and fathers have played important subset parental roles for me, tagging in at times when I lived states away from my own family, and also just showing me the concerned affection and support that loving people do for their children's friends.  I had no shortage of caring, thoughtful guides through my teens and twenties helping me navigate the terrain and, though they *were* parents, managing to do so without the looming way that actual parents can't help but do.


One of those people was Chris, my best gal Nicole's Stepma/friend.  Nicole credits Chris for stepping in when Nicole was young to add a very important element of emotional intelligence and artistic exploration, both of which have helped color Nicole's experience--the whole living thing.  And though I wasn't ever close enough to Chris to have received the full extent of those benefits, I feel like just having access to her offerings through Nicole and Nicole's telling of things has helped color my own experience in a positive way as well.


I was overjoyed when Chris told me she wanted to join me for a GGA playdate.  I knew she'd have some cool thing to offer, likely involving art or education (Chris is a veteran educator.  I once had the chance to substitute for a few days in one of her classes and I could tell--cuz I'd been to a lot of classrooms during my subbing days--that she was especially dedicated, creative, and cool in her approach).  Or, in this case, art education, best of both worlds.


Today's New Activity: Drawing Lessons


Oh man.  What a beautiful day for meeting in a courtyard to learn a little something.  Because I rarely get the chance to see Chris, we of course had to sandwich the lesson with a good bit of catching up.

I should really stop taking pictures of people when they're talking or just not looking.  I'm all for candid shots, but sometimes it would be nice to have a full-face shot of somebody who's actually looking my way :)


After we gabbed a little while, Chris set about giving me one of the lessons from Betty Edwards's book Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain.

She explained to me that what goes wrong so often in drawing (or the reason why so many people don't draw in the satisfyingly realistic way they'd like to) is that people draw to their expectation of what things should look like rather than drawing what they actually see in front of them.  For a quick example, she mentioned asking her students what a can of soup looks like.  Of course they mentioned that there are a round top and bottom and two lines that connect on the sides.  When she drew this, step by step and literally, it came out looking ridiculous.  Everybody agrees on the basic elements that make up a can of soup, but if you try drawing one with those shapes in your mind you are most definitely NOT going to get a can of soup.


This all made perfect sense.  I once had a coworker who was an art student and he was drawing my feet for practice (he said feet and hands were the most difficult for him).  I asked him if he got tired of staring at people's feet and he mentioned that he doesn't even see feet when he's drawing.  It was all about copying down exactly what he saw in lines and shapes, not necessarily about what the whole of those parts made up...not in the moment anyway.


Edwards's book is all about teaching people to draw exactly what they see rather than what their minds have decided is the expectation.  All the non-artists among us might say that a face is made up of a circle for the head, two ovals for eyes, etc.  But put that on paper and you look like a 4-year-old.  If you were to really draw a face, from real life or from a picture, you would see that there are, of course, no circles anywhere in sight.  Drawing what you see would make the entire world in your mind begin to look different, I imagine.


In today's exercise, Chris took a photocopy of a drawing and (without letting me see it) turned it upside down and covered it with a thick piece of construction paper.  She then revealed a little bit at a time (about 1 1/2- 2 inches and asked me to just copy exactly what I saw.

I know it's kind of hard to see because my pencil drawing is so much lighter than the copy, but this is what it looked like about a third of the way into the drawing.  This exercise was so interesting because when you remove any attachment from what the image is supposed to be (I had no idea what this was even right up until the end), you just concentrate on shapes, lines, and shading, and you end up with a pretty realistic version of the original.  You can see that my angles were woefully off, but the essence of the drawing--the image--remained in tact.  This was the final outcome:

Turns out I was copying and Shel Silverstein rendition of Captain Hook :)  My Hook is a little taller and skinner, it seems.


Chris does this exercise with all her students, who have ranged in age over the years from 1st graders to the current class of alternative program high schoolers she now has.  What a gift it must be to show people they can actually draw, which most of us stop believing we can do right around Kindergarten.


Of course this is just one exercise in a whole workbook meant to bring out the inner artist.  She showed me the notebook she used to practice in when she was first gifted the book for Christmas 30 years ago.  I am not joking (because I saw the dates she'd carefully recorded under the drawings): she went from drawing this typical self-portrait (well I don't know if it's typical but this is probably exactly what I would produce if asked to draw a self portrait)

To this (copying a photograph of a friend of hers), in the span of about a week and a half:

Ridiculous!


I think I'd be flattering myself to think I could pull off that kind of transformation, but I did love the lesson here.  I had completely dismissed the idea of ever drawing anything again until today.  You know, it's really true that when you're a kid and you see that other people can do something you just can't seem to do, you stop wanting to even try (at least that's the effect the dynamic had on me.  Some people are that much more motivated to succeed--those people are cooler than me, but I'm learnin' here...I'm growin'!).


But I want to work on erasing all that discouragement.  I want my son to grow up feeling like the entire world is his, as a possibility.  And I can't imagine how he can believe this without witnessing it lived by example.  How would this sit, "Oh of course you can draw.  Go ahead, try it.  Everyone can draw."  "Ok Mama, you do it too then."  "Oh no, Mama can't draw!"  Yeah, bit of a mixed message there.  And this is not to say I'll be good at it, but at least that I'm encouraged anew to try.


I can't wait to find an interesting subject and draw him or her in a series of carefully copied lines and shapes and shaded areas.  :P

The GGA Project -- Day #69 "Getting Dirty"

I have a terrible Mom confession to make.  I am the world's least fun mother when it comes to making messes.  The thought of the clean-up involved keeps me from introducing my boy to a whole bunch of things I'm sure he would really, really enjoy.


When I see kids with finger paints, it makes me cringe.  I would rather eat play dough than let a child play with in.  And glitter?  Just shoot me, okay?


I feel really awful about this.  My friends Nicole and Kelsi are awesome moms in this department.  They truly take to heart the value of creative expression for their little tots, and they don't seem to mind at all cleaning up after the hurricane-like messes left in the wake of children's art activities.  I could not be more opposite to them in this way.


It's not that I don't value creative expression. In theory, I think it's a wonderful thing.  But theory gets the mother of all cold shoulders when I imagine scraping paste out of my son's hair or explaining to my own Mom how streaks of blue marker came to adorn her newly-painted walls, light-colored carpet, hardwood floors, granite counter tops, or very handsome couches.  Gah!


I've been wanting to work on this, though.  I don't want to deprive my child of creative or developmental possibilities, and I most especially don't want to deprive him of fun, just because I can be a stick in the mud.


Gotta start *somewhere*


Today's New Activity: Playing with the Monkey, Playing with Markers


I know how totally unremarkable this probably sounds to other moms out there, but I'm telling you it's a big step for me.  The other day, we were over at Nicole's and Chupi simply could not keep his hands off the hundreds of markers, crayons, pencils and pens to be found in various places around her living room (Nicole is an artist and former art teacher).  While I liked the idea of his wanting to color, I just could not relax to let this happen.


Ok, this has a smidge bit to do with the fact that every now and then he still tries to eat the colors.  And when I see that I want to dive on him as if he were on fire and put an end to it.  Eating markers = not good for you.  But to be honest, I'm more concerned with the potential marks on his mouth than any toxic shock possibilities.  Sureya, on the other hand, had various colors all over her mouth when we got there and Nicole didn't even think twice of it.  Rightly so, she just sees it as par for the toddler course, relaxes, and lets her little cutie enjoy as all munchkins should.  I'm trying to take a page out of her playbook.

But sigh.  I couldn't even let him go at it without first putting a bib on him.  Is this practical or crazy?  I mean, is it just too much that I'm afraid he'll ruin his clothes with marker stains?  Because I really don't want to be one of those anal retentive freak moms who leaves her kid with a complex, fearing to even let a little popper of a fart loose.  Pleeeaaasseee don't let me be one of those moms.


After putting the bib on him, I sat him on my lap so I could keep a close watch on any stray marks that might mar the counter tops, and also so I could pick up the markers that kept rolling off the counter before Juju the dog could swipe them and take them to her little humper's lair (which she still managed to pull off once).

Monkey had a lot of fun sampling all the color choices, and even more fun, I think, playing with pulling off and putting back on the marker tops.  Look, look, I let him get his hands all marked up at least.  I think that should count for something as a starting point.

I'm not sure I'll ever manage to be the cool art project mom that Nicole and Kelsi are.  It would take a lot of core changing for me to pull off even a shade of that kind of letting go.  But I want to try and keep in mind how much fun the monkey has when he is allowed to create.  He did NOT want to get down from the stool or even let those markers out of his sight tonight when it was time for dinner.  I know there's a happy medium place I can find wherein the baby's allowed to enjoy and express himself through arty stuff, but not allowed to just go nuts and ruin things.  It doesn't have to be one or the other.


I'm getting there.  Just please nobody give him anything involving glitter or sand art just yet.  You know...baby steps...