I knew her when…
posted in Art, NaBloPoMo, OmegaDotter, School |When the dotter becomes a famous artist, I am going to go around being such a mom. “Did you see that new painting she did?! Isn’t it awesome?!” “You need to buy that sculpture of hers. Did you know she was making sculptures out of construction paper when she was a tiny girl? It’s only $3,000! C’mon!”
Really. I am in awe of her talent. My mom, GrannyJ, is very artsy; she was always doodling and drawing and making hooked rugs and making psychodelic creatures out of papier mache. I, however, find drawing hard. Hard, hard, hard. At my ripe old age of *cough* *ahem*, I have the patience to be very careful and do an okay drawing of a horse if I really, really try.
But the dotter…give her paper and scissors and tape and pencils or markers, and she’s off in a dream world, concentrating so hard that she doesn’t hear you. (Of course, that’s no great feat: she doesn’t hear you most of the time, anyway, so you end up getting louder and louder until she finally gets all huffy and says, “I’m going!” or “I hear you!” or some variation thereof.)
A few weeks ago she purchased a SpongeBob SquarePants book at the fall book fair. She’s been reading bits and pieces of it, under duress–she still hates to read on her own. (Wah.) (I keep saying to myself that someday it will kick in; my gorgeous niece also hated to read at this age, but now devours novels.) But I discovered the other day that she has also been…well:
Mind you, these are copies of pictures in the book, so it’s not original work. But, dayum. I can’t do that! Any kid looking at these pics would (a) know who the characters are, and (b) think that some grown-up had drawn them. Heck, I thought some grown-up had drawn them…someone who snuck into our house, used our paper and pencils, drew them, then snuck out again after leaving the pictures behind.
Did I mention she’s only 7 years old? And that this wasn’t tracing, but free-hand?
She is so artistic. It is so amazing. And it has been there from the beginning; she has always wanted to draw, color, paint, create things. I’m leaving her to it, letting her figure her own way around–the school has no art classes (none), due to the reading, writing and arithmetic scheduling resulting from NCLB edicts. They’re lucky they still have recess and their one rotating “special” class. I’m hoping that middle school will include art classes, but if it doesn’t, by that time she will have full confidence in her abilities and we will have to find an artist mentor for her.
Because art is like breathing for her.
