Co-creating with my Family

You know that I’m all about creativity. I’ve been described as an ambassador to creativity. Putting a slice of yourself into the world is affirming in the most wonderful ways. And I also believe that community creativity is a sure fire way to join people together.

My family is regularly subjected to family art projects by me. In the Fall, group pumpkin carving is mandatory. We go out and pick our pumpkins and one night before Halloween, we sit at the kitchen table, draw out our jack-o-lantern faces, scoop out, and carve our pumpkins together. Then have dinner and watch a favorite scary movie with the jack-o-lanterns lit up on the bookshelf in front of us.

At Easter, we all dye Easter eggs together. I make sure I have the eggs cooked and we all try different techniques like tye dying and rubber bands and drippy eggs. Our fingers get dark with dyes and we chatter and say”look at this” and there is a palpable feeling of pride in creation. It makes us feel good to create and we feel good together while we do it.

So when I had this idea to art these plates for the garden fence wall, I thought why not involve the whole family in making the art? We chose animals and insects that we’d encountered in our backyard. I bought the right paints for ceramics. I downloaded the animal pictures. Then I cut out the animal shapes from clear sticky back shelf paper and adhered them to the plates.  The animal shapes would come out white after we’d painted them and peeled  off the shelf paper.

My son chose to paint the turtle and the firefly. My daughter painted the fox, the raccoon, the squirrel, and the rabbit. We joined together with great sincerity and intention in our now air-conditioned garage and set to work to create art. And that’s what we did. Each persons’ was different yet they were all united by a theme. And just this weekend, I finally mounted the last four as I had to go buy more plate hangers.

Creating memories with my family is always an ulterior motive. But luckily my kids are creative and grab any opportunity to find themselves within whatever medium is laid in front of them, be it pumpkin, egg, or plate. And long after the kids are gone, I’m still have a piece of them in my backyard.

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And, as always, Thanks to you for your visit.