09 May The Art Table
Growing up, my parents had a table in their house known as the art table. It stood adjacent to the kitchen table and was covered with years of crayon markings and dried glue and paint smudges.
You see, my mother is an artist (though she probably wouldn’t introduce herself this way). She left art school and teaching behind to be a stay-at-home mom for her three kids, but art continued to be central to her life. She never stopped encouraging creativity, particularly in her children.
Every few days, my mom would refresh the art table with new open-ended art activities. My siblings and I would find stacks of colorful paper and markers, popsicle sticks and glue, bags of clay with wooden-handled clay tools, scraps of wood with child-sized hammers and nails, or lined paper and sharpened pencils to write stories. Nearby were cabinets full of different kinds of paint, felt, buttons, stacks of magazines to cut up and turn into collages, and homemade playdough scented with different flavors.
After school, my siblings and I would usually have a snack and then spend time making something at the art table. We would return to the table as a break from homework and, when we were older, during the times we decided to venture out from our bedrooms. It was the heart of our house. Sometimes we would talk and sometimes we would be silent as our paint brushes swirled in watercolors.
It took me a long time to realize that this wasn’t everyone’s reality—that my brother, sister, and I were some of the lucky ones.
When we had friends over, everyone was drawn to the art table.
So often, our friends would sit with their hands folded in their laps and ask my mom politely, “What are we supposed to make?” as their eyes scanned the table full of supplies.
My mom would reply, “Anything you would like! Use your imagination!”
Our friends would carefully pull a green marker out from a box. They would draw a green stem coming up from the bottom of the page. They would add two green leaves, one on each side of the stem. Then they would top the stem with a series of red oval shapes to make a flower. They would put a yellow sun in the corner.
When I think back on the art table, I see it now as symbolic. It was a reminder to engage joyfully and freely in life, think creatively, make connections between different materials, and be able to articulate ideas and emotions in different forms. At the art table, we learned:
- To see the potential of what things might become.
- To patiently hold a pencil and not be afraid to use the eraser until the words captured what we wanted to express.
- To put our thoughts and feelings into pounded clay or poems or swirls of paint.
- To look at a sheet of white paper as a page waiting for a story to fill its space.
- To toss first drafts onto the floor and see them as a step closer to getting it right rather than a failure.
- To become independent and capable by figuring out the answer to the question, “How will you do it?”
- To dismiss the idea that there’s only one way that things can be done.
- To recognize the endless possibility of colors there can be in a flower.
Every week, when I sit down to write a blog, I am grateful for my mom, who showed me how to appreciate the process of shaping words into stories.
Though there might not be as many pictures of her in the bins of photos from my childhood (because she was so often behind the camera), there will never be any doubt that she was there. She’s in every word I write.
Happy Mother’s Day to my favorite artist, my mom, and all the moms out there who recognize the endless possibility of colors there can be in a flower.
Thank you, Mom, for letting me see every single one.