Happy Mother's Day

On April 20, 1960 an artist was born…was he born or was he developed over time? That is the question and here is how I see it.

I was born one of 13 children, better known as the “Runs With Scissors Tribe”, our dad called us the “Tribe” we ran with scissors later. I am one of the middle children, yup, a “Marcia, Marcia, Marcia” child. Our entire family has artistic talent at one level or another, I just choose to publicly express mine a bit more. Our mother had quite a job raising us, it would have been easy to use the cookie cutter method and make us all alike. But Noooo, she chose to make us thirteen individuals and I truly thank her for that. If you see all of us in one room you think to yourself… “They look kind of alike, but Wow, they are not the same at all.” Our parents, especially Mom, gave us a lot of room to be ourselves and fail if we needed to. She always had words of wisdom like “won’t do that again? Will ya?” ,“ That’s gonna leave a mark” , “What did you think was going to happen?”, and of course the ever popular “I’m saving this one for your father.”

My mother was a bit of an artist, no one knew her real hair color, it changed all the time. My dad could never remember what color it started as either. I think that may be where changing “my look” comes from. Some people don’t realize it but ten years ago I was shaving my head and only had a small goatee, then grew my hair a bit and went to dying the hair and goatee white. So a change could be coming again…

My brothers Bryan and Gene are one of the reasons I am the way I am today. Bryan and I were in the same grade through most of school and it was fun. Mom would always tell Bryan to keep an eye on me. On a survey Bryan was once asked to list his favorite toy and he wrote “Roger”. Bryan could talk me into anything, and I mean anything. He talked me into jumping off our house with a “leader chute”, that is the small chute that pulls out the main parachute, it failed the first time, and he told me he fixed it and I did it again, again a failure but it was open when I smacked the ground. I think Mom gave him a whooping on that one. I remember her telling me, “you do know they are trying to kill you, don’t you?”

In grade school, we went to a parochial, Bryan would collect money from kids to have me vomit, I could vomit on command, right before a spelling test. By the time the mess got cleaned up, they would come in and spread sawdust on it and give the students recess, spelling time was over and no test. Bryan would give me a nickel so I could buy chocolate milk at lunch.

I remember we used to get sent to our room in the afternoon to take a nap or because we were in trouble, he and Gene would toss the mattresses out the window and then get me to jump down on them straighten them up so they could jump down safely. Mom saw this, we were not real bright, the bedroom window was right above the big picture window in the living room. Yup, Bryan and Gene got in trouble for this one too.

In Jr. High Bryan locked me in my locker, I was small enough to fit easily in one, for the entire day, he told me to be quiet and I did. He did bring me lunch and let me out when school got out. A bit tough to explain the next day, I was not absent from school, I was there, just not in classes. Mom had to make a trip to school on this one and explain it to the principal. Made sense to her, but he never got it. Yup, Mom had a serious discussion with Bryan on this one.

In high school there were a lot of things, one of my fondest was when I invited my parents to a homecoming pep rally. That was the year I streaked. After the pep rally I remember my mother saying that no one saw me because they were all looking at her like she was “the bad mom”. She was very proud of me for that one.

There are literally hundreds of such stories. The case of “get out of my seat” or else, or being thrown out the upstairs window in Goose Bay to dig out the front door after a snow storm. Riding a bike down a ski slope, riding a motorcycle through a school ( I was only an accomplice), indoor dodge ball, bologna on the ceiling, banana peels and ceiling fans, and of course skateboards behind the motorcycle. WE did this and more and Mom would punish us when we earned it, or she would refer us to Dad. I remember the big thing was if you did something bad on Monday or Tuesday, because Dad worked in Omaha during the week and came home on weekend, you hoped someone did something worse later in the week, it could save you. All of this combines to keep my mind on a different level than other people or most artists for that matter. It makes me a better risk taker with my art, not afraid to fail or be criticized for what I have done.

In the fourth grade I was put in a T.A.G. program ( Talented and Gifted). I was doing two and three point perspective and could draw just about anything I saw. The down side was that I rarely got recess, I guess that is part of why I never really grew up. Still making up recess time.

Mom was my biggest art fan. Not the type to hang art on the refrigerator. It was put on the walls at least for a while. She would come to my school art shows and see what I “could” have in the show and then come down the art room to see the stuff that was “not ready for public viewing” Even in school I was testing limits.

Mom’s favorite work of art I did was “The Protest” It was a hippie, long hair, torn jeans, shaking his fist in the air, and there was a rat at the bottom. The rat was HUGE, if the hippie was six foot tall, the rat would have been three feet long, and my Mom loved it. It was one of those early 70’s poster style paintings.

I think a lot of the “art” comes from growing up in such a group. We had at most three channels on TV, but only one in Goose Bay. We did not have the distractions of the internet, cell phones and all that other stuff. We played, we played together, we had our own softball team, we had the “SPUD Championships of the World”, we created games and used our imaginations. I remember one of the projects at Goose Bay was cutting out fish from construction paper and putting them on the wall, hundreds and hundreds of fish. Our friends would come over and help. Ours was always the house everyone would show up at, you could be yourself there, be creative there and Mom not only allowed it, she encouraged it.

Mom passed away more than 20 years ago, I still miss her, still create some art just for her. I was on vacation when she passed away, took me a long time to forgive myself for that. One of my fondest memories was the dinner we had at Pizza Hut before I left since I was going to be gone over Christmas. We talked and laughed, she was cutting up Dad’s pizza and he was making fun with it. When I tried calling home all I got was a busy signal over and over, when I finally got through Dad answered, tough call to make and talk to him, but by the end of the call we were laughing about some stuff and that is what Mom would have wanted more than anything, be yourself, be happy, be the artist.

Those who wanted to know a bit more about how I became an artist, there you have it. It is not as much about the schooling as it is the experiences growing up. I know this does not follow a timeline, and bounces all over but that is me, good bad or otherwise. I have mellowed a bit over the years, but here I am, still myself, still happy and definitely still the artist, thanks Mom, Happy Mother’s Day! … that’s the way I see it, thanks for reading, Peace

p.s. have you “run with scissors today?”