Both Sides Now

sketchylife107

My day is made up of glimpses.  I think I keep the mountains in my mind everyday, but, even in Shangri-la, the glimpses of getting from point A to point B can lose their impact.  One of the constant exceptions is on my drive to the town over the state line.

There’s a glimpse that forces me to gaze at a greening field filled with baby goats as the Pastoral symphony play on my internal iPod.

Then there’s the ride back.

Most of it is still glances, except for the part of the journey that takes me past the goat farm, but in the opposite direction.  That part is a glance and then a gentle guffaw as a hand painted sign bearing the words “Kids for Sale” comes into view.

The perfect curve of the road and sunlit field are the fantasy of country life.  The sign is the business and the art of surviving that life with a sense of humor still fully intact.

kids-web

Smile

smile
I’m never sure what it is about sketching that produces such calm.  Maybe it’s the instant gratification – watching something appear on a recently-blank page.  Sometimes I think it’s the hypnotically rhythmic sound of the scratching pencil on paper that lulls away the angst. All I know for sure is that while listening to the gentle din of the café in the morning as I watch my son’s enigmatic gaze appear, all I have done for the last half hour is smile.

 

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPCmOGNEoeo?rel=0]

Paper Puttering

sketchylife108

A few weeks ago, I told a friend that I rarely feel like an artist. I was just a writer who does a doodle or two with her posts.  I think all of us have a tendency to look at the work of others – creative or otherwise – and feel like we’re coming up short.  Those perceived shortcomings often cause me to hem and haw about claiming the status of artist.

Lately, though, I’ve been doodling a lot more. It’s not about a status, and it’s not about getting better at doodling.  It’s just about getting better inside my head. Words spoken out loud can get you into trouble, but doodles get you through it.  They may seem just like scribbles on a cheap sketch pad, but there’s a lot more going on in those lines even if it’s not spelled out.

Best of Worlds

sketchylife106

  The one-traffic light town of Cambridge, NY seems like a metropolis compared to our neighboring village, but it wasn’t until a year ago, when a new cafe moved into the building next to Hubbard Hall, community theatre and arts center, that it became a different world – one I’d been missing since we moved to Vermont from Germany over a decade ago.

Our tiny mountain town is so small we merge with ‘historic’ Arlington for a lot of our services.

Every town in Vermont is ‘historic’, but I come to love Arlington because of what it is now. Our kids know most of the other kids here. Drivers still wave as they pass each.  There’s a predictable rhythm of clotheslines and gardens, carnival fundraisers and heated debates over deer hunting and the mud-rutted roads.  The cars may be modern and the glow of  smartphones can be seen at town functions, but time seems slower here.  It’s mundane, but  as Thing1 was joined by Thing2, I’ve learned to appreciate the mundane.

Hubbard Hall, a cauldron of creativity housed in a nineteenth-century opera house first drew me to Cambridge.  It pulled my husband into acting, my kids into theatre and music, and me back into art.   Regular workshops for me and the kids have made the cafe my favorite new haunt and, as much as I still love the mundane, there’s something to be said for being able to live in two worlds.

Jitter Bug

Jitter bug medicine blog 4 8 2014

There’s a bug going around the school this spring.  I usually resist the urge to pump my kids full of unnecessary antibiotics, but last night Thing2’s nose was runneth-ing over, and I got out the purple stuff.

Literally taking his sniffles in stride, Thing2 came limping over to me (apparently this particular strain of flu is being sponsored by the American Branch of  the Department of Silly Walks) and opened his mouth.  I popped in a spoonful of grape-flavor.  He danced on one foot and then the other quickly and then looked at me and smiled.

“I’m just making sure it gets everywhere, Mom.”

“The flu?”

“No, the medicine through my body.”  His legs regained functionality as he slid around the floor, jitterbugging to his internal iPod.  “And, I think it’s working, Mom.”

One of us clearly doesn’t understand how the purple stuff is supposed to work, but it might not be the guy dancing around the kitchen in his jammies.

The Common Thread Give-a-way, Win a Visit from the “Easter Bunny”

Easter Bunny by Kim Gifford

Happy April – hopefully Happy Spring wherever you are.

Kim Gifford is the Common Thread’s artist of the month, and her print, Easter Bunny, is perfectly in sync with a season of renewal.  Kim’s digital collages always look like renaissance paintings to me, complete with real world angels and, of course, her signature pugs.

Easter Bunny is an 8 x 10 Print on Watercolor Paper. (Collage image is approximately 5  x 7 in center of white border) and is ready to frame.

If you’d like a chance to win Kim Giffords “Easter Bunny”  just leave a comment here on Kim’s Blog Pugs and Pics.   The winner will be announced on Thursday.   Good Luck!

When you’ve commented on Kim’s blog visit the rest of the artists in our group – when you’ve commented on her site, take a minute to visit the other artists in our group –   Jon KatzMaria Wulf, and Jane McMillan!

 

If Everyone Jumped

Windpower Apr 1 2014

“Mom, I have a new superpower!”  Thing2 barely had his seatbelt on.  “I can create wind!”  That neatly explained seven-year-old Thing2’s energetic,  skyward gestures as he hopped off the bus.

“What do you mean?” I asked.  Thirteen-year-old Thing1 smirked as he tried not to inject eighth grade into a heretofore innocent and imaginative conversation.

“I can,” Thing2 insisted, launching into an explanation of how to get the weather to bend to your will.

We quickly figured out that the weekend’s Frozen marathon – halted when Thing1 threatened to get a court order to get Thing2 to stop playing it – had inspired the afternoon’s flight of fancy.  It’s the result of a pattern that’s threatened to force us into using the worst parenting platitude ever devised.  It’s one I prayed I’d never use, but here we may be.

Thing2 had zero interest in Frozen until last week.  He, along with the rest of the boys in his class, were left off the guest list of a girl’s slumber party (a story unto itself).  Discovering the party’s theme and certain he was off the list because of his ignorance of the plot’s complexities, he promptly began begging to see it.

“I’m the only one in my class who hasn’t seen it,” he told me, digging out the other most over-used phrase in parent-child relations .

“Where have I heard this before?” I asked, resisting the temptation for a traditional answer. The question was rhetorical – I’d heard the complaint two weeks earlier.  It was before ‘Everything is Awesome’ from The Lego Movie became the newest tune Thing2 used to torture Thing1’s highly sophisticated musical ear and he’d been the only kid whose parents were keeping him in a cultural wasteland devoid of talking Lego characters.

I was a teeny bit curious about Frozen, however, so when the Big Guy and Thing1 were busy with homework  hit the download button.  The rest of the weekend was history.

I’ve avoided completing the other half of the ‘Everyone else is doing it’ equation for thirteen years not because I’m a parenting genius, but because Thing1 is a born skeptic.  If his friends were jumping off the proverbial bridge, he’d ask if they had insurance and a rope.

Thing2 is a different matter.  He doesn’t go along with the crowd just to go along with the crowd.  He goes where the fun is.

When we got back from the bus stop,  Thing2 offered to demonstrate his wind powers.   I fetched firewood as Thing2 climbed to the top of a snow drift, raising his hands in the air and gesturing to the clouds.  The top of the pine trees continued to sway.  “See?”

Weather control soon bored him and he began jumping from drift to drift.

“You’re going to get hurt,” I said.

“No I won’t. Look, Mom,” he said as I filled the canvas wood carrier again.  “I’m jumping over the Grand Canyon.”

I stopped and watched him leap between two solid snow drifts.  He really did look like he was getting ready to jump over a gorge, and I realized I’ll never get to ask the oldest, most-overused query in parent-child relations.  The answer was already there in his flushed cheeks and every new story he was imagining with each leap.  More jumpers would just make it more fun.