My Happy Place has always been wherever I am doing something creative with
my hands. I can spend hours or days in my craft room. It’s where I get inspiration, get lost in my thoughts, let go of
inhibitions and just play.
The following
stories about my early creative side are so ME.
In the summer between second and third grade, 1960 I do believe, the public
school near our house had a fun summer school sort of thing. It is not clear in
my adult head, what it actually was because there was no curriculum that I can
recall, just a camp kind of
atmosphere where we went to play. It could have been for a day or two, or
longer, I’m not clear on that part either. I am sure of the time frame because I
attended that public school in second grade before attending Catholic school in
third grade the following year.
I doubt very seriously if it was something my parents had to pay for,
that wasn’t going to happen, but nonetheless, we went to the school for part of
the day and did stuff. Fun stuff.
Like gathering in the auditorium and watching black and white movies. It’s
where I first saw Esther Williams and for those of you too young to know who
she is, she was a swimmer turned movie star and they made movies about, well, swimming - starring
Esther... Busby Berkely at his best. She was beautiful in her one-piece ultra
conservative bathing suits, and she wore spotless makeup and smiled while she
swam. When she took off her swimming cap and shook her head, her hair fell into
a beautifully coiffed-do. I was mesmerized.
More appropriate to my story, the other fun thing we did at that
summer school was to go to an art room and do projects. I
vividly remember drawing an elephant walking on grass. I added a palm tree
for effect! I was awesome (not) and I was so proud. When I shared it with the teacher he
immediately said “Well, that is the skinniest elephant I’ve ever seen” and he
promptly handed it back to me and walked away. What?! His obvious disenchantment with my
drawing was shocking! Shocking.
A couple of years later, I made the most incredible Father’s
Day card ever (not). I drew a popgun on the front of a folded piece of paper
and wrote “to the best Pop ever” on the inside. See what I did there – Oh, I
was brilliant alright! My dad oohed and ahhed over it and hung it in the garage over
his workbench, obviously so he could look at it all day. Every day.
Eventually I found the
card ripped in half and in his trashcan in the garage and immediately kicked my
little brother’s ass for having the audacity to go in there, take dad’s treasured card and just throw
it away like that.
Tom told me that it wasn’t him but dad who threw it away,
but I just knew he was lying. Like a rug. He had to be. Snickering little liar! That
night, I overheard my dad tell my mom the story, and my heart was broken. Yes, dad was the one who threw my awesome card away.
I’d
love to insert here that I apologized to little Tom and gave him a hug. Bwahaha, I
never apologized for anything. As my grandson says… “I’m sorry for nothing!”
Forward to 5th grade in Catholic school. Our art
assignment was to draw something depicting Egypt. I spent the entire class staring at my paper and looking at papers
around me being drawn by my classmates in hopes that I could copy someone else's idea
(cuz that’s what great artists do) but I had NOTHING. Oh, I knew about sphinx and
pyramids and deserts but I couldn’t make a single mark on my paper. The only thing I drew was a
complete blank. My head was spinning and
my inside voice was saying, “draw SOMETHING!” Instead - I turned in a blank
paper. Blank! I got a D that semester on my report card. In art
for Pete’s! And to make it even more horrendous, Father Hagerty circled the D
in red ink before my report card got handed to me. Yes, the pastor of our
church came to each classroom and looked at every single report card in the
front of the class. He was seated at the teacher’s desk with a red ballpoint pen in his
hand. Just watching him make a move towards a report card with that pen
brought audible gasps from the entire class. The red circle of shame, and I got
one. I also got my ass kicked when my parents saw that D.
In my junior or was it my senior year in high school
(don’t ask me why that time frame is blurry to me) I found a match book with
this on it:
This was an ad for Art Instruction School of America, and this dear was named Winky. I of course, drew Winky and sent it in. It said... "draw Winky and you too can become a famous artist". Well, Lo and Behold, a
representative of the famous school came knocking on our door soon after, proclaiming I
had soooo much potential and would be the perfect
candidate for their at-home art instruction classes.
More than anything this gentleman said, I remember that he had one
arm. I stared at his fake
arm, which was sticking out of the sleeve of his suit jacket. It was very low
tech and actually looked like a department store mannequin’s arm - flesh toned
and stiff. The fingers didn't move. This was the late sixties, so technology hadn't quite kicked in for prosthetics. I only heard about every tenth word of his pitch, because in my head I was saying "don't stare at his arm, don't stare at his arm".
I begggggged my mom to let me
sign up, and looking back on it all, I am amazed that she agreed, but she did!
I know it was beyond our budget, but I swore I’d do all the assignments
and become a great artist with a brilliant career.
So there I was, a student in
Art Instruction School’s at-home art classes. They sent me real supplies, like a wooden
drawing board and pencils and chalks and charcoal and water colors. This is how it worked: they
provided you with an assignment every few weeks or so, to which you would read the
instructions on how to do the technique, then you used the supplied tools to complete the
assignment. After completion, you sent back your paper to the school. When it came back after grading, there
were some critiquing notes on the pages - written in red ink of course, the color
of shame - and a letter grade at the top. I’m pretty sure I was a solid C
student. I'm not kidding - it was the man-art-teacher-who-hated-my-elephant all over again. I don’t remember how many assignments I did before
I quit… But I do know my mom made me finish making the monthly payments until the contract was
done. In my own defense, you can read all day long how to use watercolors (or any other technique), but figuring out how to actually do it on your own was difficult.
Turns out, I wasn’t the perfect candidate for at-home art
instruction. Surprise! But that wooden drawing board came in real handy later
during my apartment years. I used it as a weapon to hurl like a frisbee on top of gigantic roaches or spiders that creeped their way in.
Thank you Art Instruction Schools, I
have no
diploma, no brilliant art career. Just a smack on the back of the head from my mother ("I told you so, you never finish anything") and the memory of a frightfully bad artificial limb burned eternally into the front of it.
