This writing about my journey to becoming an artist will be published in several posts, as it is too long for one post.

making of an artist

This account will not be long. Nor will it have any dramatic moments of awakening, only slow remembrances of beauty and attraction, longing and a slow wide-eyed wonder at art that unfolded for me.

It was mid 90's and I was at a party, I can’t remember the occasion but it was a party full of artists. My friend Marge was the hostess. She is well connected in the art’s community so everyone was there.

The music was loud Latin, as she and her then husband were passionate tango dancers. It was festive. I was in her living room sitting on the couch next to RH.  R is a successful painter but somewhat of a shy fellow. His paintings had, at least for the moment, fallen out of favor and he was busy supporting himself by making sterling jewelry. (His minimal silvery shapes are like thin slices of the moon unlike the traditional busy twists and turns of most hand made jewelry. Just lovely.)

I had never really spoken to him, as I thought he was a bit standoffish out of conceit (after all he was quite successful), but on this occasion I realized he was just painfully shy. What a happy revelation that can be. We were talking about when we first realized that we were artists. He said there was never a time when he didn’t know; he had started drawing as soon as he could hold a pencil. Being an artist was never in doubt for him.

Puzzled, I told him I had come late to that discovery. As a child I did the usual coloring, drawing and writing.  And there was little encouragement from either my parents or teachers. To be honest I probably did not show any great talent. Pondering this that evening I remembered a seminal experience I had had as a child.  I still felt its pull and creative power.  So I told him this story.

I was 6. My grandparents lived in Victoria a small town 120 miles southwest of Houston. We visited them there often. On this particular visit I was playing with Nancy and Janice, twins who lived in, what we referred to as the Offer’s house. They were close to my age and the house was only 2 down from Grandma and Grandpa’s. We were allowed to roam the block without supervision.

Nancy and Janice taught me to play canasta. My parents didn’t play cards (other than that adult game of Bridge) so it was always fun to visit with them. But on this particular day someone (maybe me) suggested we build a house.  We chose the front yard as the location. We gathered twigs, branches and small stones from the earth. That was all we needed.  With sticks we drew the outline of the structure on the dusty ground. On each side of the sidewalk we pushed our branches into the dirt defining the shape and using stones delineated the walls. We somehow attached branches across the top to make a ceiling. My memory is that the twins lost interest whereas I was mesmerized by the process and the endless possibilities afforded by our chosen materials. I worked on it until evening. That new thrill of creativity was gripping. And the expansive nature of that creativity was like a sparkly bath of joy to my tiny and inexperienced psyche. This was new… the vibrant pleasure of bringing into life a thing of substance, beauty, worth or was it simply the satisfying miracle of creation? It left me longing for more.

I thought about it for years. From this distance in time I now see that this was pure creativity, unfettered, untamed and lacking self-consciousness. Although in years following I never reproduced that virgin experience try as I might. I built many more forts, houses, Christmas tree houses throughout those early years, but never was I able to recreate that wonder. Nor did I ever forget it.

That evening on the couch with RH I realized that was my first sculpture, my first truly creative act.

Now in thinking back over those formative years I can see whispers of my creative spirit emerging. If not truly gifted, I found beauty in many things and had developed a personal aesthetic. My creativity came out in collecting, writing, sewing and even cooking.

Absolutely the only thing I remember about kindergarten was learning perspective. I can still picture the teacher at the blackboard drawing a hexagram with a peaked top and then putting angled lines from its corners and joining them with a straight line. A house!  I was 4 years old and only attended for a month or two, because the nuns at my Catholic school terrified me and I begged not to have to go. But the concept of creating the illusion of 3-dimension in a 2 dimensional field was born.

to be continued...