I grew up hearing my mother’s mantra; you’ve got to have heart–you’ve got to have art! My mother, an artist, art educator, and art historian, meant this for the arts collectively. An accomplished artist, I associate much of my childhood watching her process: creating, curating art shows, and teaching.
Our home was a creative one. There were materials to make things with quite a number of old-fashioned tools and “technology,” including an etching press, spinning wheel and loom.
The cape below is my mother’s creation. She wove it, wore it, and later passed it on to me. I wore the cape throughout my pregnancies and now nothing quite knits family together for me like this cape.
Whether it was making natural dyes from plants my mother collected, or learning how to bind a book (yes, I learned to make my own journals and books growing up), I picked up on something important. Process. There is a process behind product and often it is an iterative one, that is nonlinear and messy.
In terms of our small cottage home, some parts were allowed to be messy. The living room was tidy, but the dining room, which my mother converted into a studio was a busy space. (Think, chandelier with art easels underneath–my mother’s and others for us kids in case we wanted to create alongside of her.)
We did have a dining table–an old oak one, but it was for more than just meals. It was often a calligraphy station and workshop space. Watching my mother’s quill transform a piece of paper with letters and flourishes was like watching something new come to life. Perhaps, in my own way, I work to make words on a page come to life too. As a teacher, I help students process words and unpackage literature, and as a writer, I stitch together a story.
KMcE Writing 