Mom was good at everything
Was wandering around in a Michael’s killing time yesterday, and it reminded me powerfully of my mother. She was much more of a fine artist than a crafts person, but I remember many trips there to find things for her various projects- and my projects, which she always helped me on.
She was one of those people who was basically good at everything. She was a classically trained artist who had at least dabbled in most things- painting, drawing, set design, graphic design, sculpture, metalworking, printmaking, you name it. So whenever she needed to make something, she often had a grounding in the necessary skills, or at least something vaguely related. And she also had the natural advantages that help with that sort of thing, like steady hands, fine motor control, the ability to extrapolate how something might work based on something else she knew. So even if she had no familiarity with whatever artistic endeavor she needed to undertake, she could figure it out and somehow always manage to produce something that looked like she knew what she was doing. Like, when she made these fabulous masks for a production of Alice in Wonderland my brother was in, she did a little research, applied what she knew about stagecraft and sculpture, and did an amazing job.
And when I needed help with something, she would take my ramblings and incoherent descriptions and always make something that was exactly what I needed. When I needed big abstract castle banners that conveyed certain meanings for my production of Hamlet, she knocked them out. When I needed a gridded-off map of a cowboy town and the surrounding land with widows with secret information for my larp The Stand, she knocked that out too. She picked things up so easily, and always made such wonderful things. I’ve always envied her that. And admired her for it.
She was one of those people who was basically good at everything. She was a classically trained artist who had at least dabbled in most things- painting, drawing, set design, graphic design, sculpture, metalworking, printmaking, you name it. So whenever she needed to make something, she often had a grounding in the necessary skills, or at least something vaguely related. And she also had the natural advantages that help with that sort of thing, like steady hands, fine motor control, the ability to extrapolate how something might work based on something else she knew. So even if she had no familiarity with whatever artistic endeavor she needed to undertake, she could figure it out and somehow always manage to produce something that looked like she knew what she was doing. Like, when she made these fabulous masks for a production of Alice in Wonderland my brother was in, she did a little research, applied what she knew about stagecraft and sculpture, and did an amazing job.
And when I needed help with something, she would take my ramblings and incoherent descriptions and always make something that was exactly what I needed. When I needed big abstract castle banners that conveyed certain meanings for my production of Hamlet, she knocked them out. When I needed a gridded-off map of a cowboy town and the surrounding land with widows with secret information for my larp The Stand, she knocked that out too. She picked things up so easily, and always made such wonderful things. I’ve always envied her that. And admired her for it.