Friday, January 9, 2009

A Blast from the Past


In a couple of my yahoo groups we have been discussing memories of art work that we did as kids. These discussions have brought back a lot of great memories for me. I remember getting a toy sewing machine for a Christmas gift and sitting in my bed at night with the candle in the window on and sketching out ideas of things to sew. As I recall none of those ideas ever worked out, but it was fun sketching them while the rest of the house was asleep. I still remember the feeling of being the only one awake when the house was so quiet. It was great!

I remember making chains from gum wrappers, potholders and mittens. In high school I was obsessed with painting cats. We had tons of books of photos of cats and I used to paint them on canvas and give them away. I wonder how thrilled the people that got them were. I only have one of them left at this point. The canvas for the dog and cat was 11" by 17" and only cost 75 cents! I guess that was expensive back in the 60's. In college I was into painting nebulae (gas clouds in space where new stars are born.) I still have one of those hanging in my office. I gave a lot of those away for gifts as well. I wonder how many hit the garbage cans over the years.

When I was a freshman in college back in the 70's I was into constructing small boxes and then gluing black and white photos from magazines on the boxes as a collage. I still have one I gave my mother for a gift. She recently gave it back to me. You can see images of people that were in the news at the time among the photos. Some of them I do not recall, but I do see Paul McCartney and JFK. I also found some words to add to the collage as you can see in the photos. I wonder what my mom thought when I gave this to her as a gift! It was probably something like !!!!??? hippie.

It has been fun thinking about doing art as a child and what a thrill it was getting a new box of crayons or paints. Eventually this all lead to making quilts. I still do some painting, but I concentrate my efforts on quilting. This is where I find my creative soul these days, but it was fun to think about the childhood that lead me here.
Chris

3 comments:

  1. so cool that your mom saved that box and gave it back~~

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  2. Look at you!! Here you were doing altered art (the boxes) long before altered art was ever named...I love your picture of your furbabies...Wow!!!! hugs, Skye

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  3. College in the 70's ... interesting times ... Viet Nam war, Kent State ... ah the memories. My art was questionable in those days. I can remember taking a design class as a senior in HS and the teacher just didn't think I had any design sense. Oh well! But, these days... quilts spark my soul! Your cat and dog are wonderful.

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