The other night I went out to dinner with a bunch of artists and art academics and they asked me about our six-year-old art-obsessed daughter. What special things do I do to encourage her with her art, they wanted to know. Then I horrified them all by admitting that mostly I try to block my daughter from creating art. It’s just that she loves art so much, I said. Their eyes widened. And it’s so messy, art is, and she does it everywhere, all the time. She just makes art out of anything and everything. Constantly. Like my business cards, cut up into tiny dioramas. Quite clever and nice to look at, but she really needed to get ready for school and we are always running late for school. So, no art. They gaped. I discourage art, I said finally. Then I couldn’t think how to explain it any better to people without children so I said, anyway, don’t artists need some kind of hurdle to overcome for their art?
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Why is there always something more pressing than getting ready for school, even for kids who love school?
You take her to art galleries, you don’t kill her when she creates dioramas from your business cards, you provide her with supplies…. and yeah, artists also need to go to school and live in the world same as kids who are obsessed with football.
To this day, my mother will throw a screaming hissy fit if I so much as glance at a pair of scissors…but she still has my art studio set up in her garage, waiting for me, and every few months she runs across some sketch or watercolor I did ages ago and gets it framed and hangs it up somewhere prominent and glows when she looks at it. I strongly suspect that art is far deeper and more powerful for the parent of the art-obsessed than it ever can be for the artist.
Our part-time nanny recently started to introduce a lot of craft activities to my children. I now completely understand ‘goddamn craft’. Glitter gets into everything!
Oh, this made me laugh so much, especially the last line.
My nephew is six. he found a photo of his mum that he liked, so he cut it out and put it in his scrap box. Then, because he KNEW, he hid the evidence.
What photo was it? An ancient photo with no negative to back it up? A wedding photo?
No, worse.
It was her passport.
Children and art, huh? Whose idea was that?
Louise Curtis
Oh Louise I think your nephew wins the Internet!
LOL
That rather sounds like me and my parents when it came to my reading. I mean, sure, they encouraged me by buying me books, etc. But they also did their job as parents and discouraged me by saying things like “Jenny, put that book down and go play with your cousins” or “yes, Jenny, we know you are excited about the book you are reading. But it’s past your bedtime. Go. To. Bed. NOW.”
Tamara
Friends and co-workers keep telling me that I need to add glitter to the preschool crafts we do at the library. I tell them that I’ll give four year olds glitter when they (my friends and co-workers) agree to do the clean-up.
still on glitter, a former nanny thought it would be a good idea to dress the little ones up by putting glitter in their hair. A year later we have finally seen the last of the glitter on my toddler’s scalp. what is it with nannies and glitter?
[…] condom (it’s ok, in its wrapper, people) so it is fortunate that the plane was built by then. Goddamn craft, it lives on in the next child, too. Share this:StumbleUponEmailTwitterFacebookLike this:LikeBe the […]
[…] Even now, with Lauca aged ten and Cormac six years old, I am still amazed by the powers of goddamn craft with my kids. […]