Passing Along the Joy

11/13/2018

I've mentioned several times now how happy Sonja and I have been with our weekly Art Nights. We meet at the library to stitch and share. Since Sonja had the day off yesterday we met at her house instead of the library. That meant we could do something more involved than stitching, but it also meant involving 3-year-old Tyler. So yesterday we introduced him to one of our favorite messy projects--gelatin printing. He loved it and we had a blast.

Tyler doesn't like to get his hands messy so this was a good project for him. He liked choosing paint colors and using the brayer to spread them. Of course he always wanted to use more than one color. Sonja was very good in not censuring any of his choices, just explaining what color would result. So he'd be rolling away saying "I'm making purple."

He also took great delight in choosing from the leaves I'd brought for making designs. (Here in Virginia there are lots of evergreens and other plants that still have their leaves, so we had a very good variety available even now in November.) He was good at helping to smooth out the papers and his joy at seeing the results is still warming my heart today. We heard him say "Wow" often yesterday. At every stage he just dove right in.

I'm sure Sonja would agree that it adds a whole new dimension to share something you love with a new generation and to have them respond with such delight. He was expressing out loud all the feelings that we were also having as we went through the same processes.

Making art with others is something I have missed since our move. Though I have joined a couple of art centers/galleries here, the focus is really on exhibiting rather than making art. Our previous art home, Western Avenue Studios, provided a unique experience of creating art as part of a community that can't really be replaced. That said, making art with your family is a different kind of awesome, irreplaceable experience that I am so grateful to have.

When your grandson covers his gelatin plate with paintbrush marks and says "Look I'm making paw prints...what a great idea!" it just doesn't get any better. Especially when you've made some papers and fabrics of your own that you're pretty delighted with ...