S/He who works with their hands is a Laborer.
S/He who works with their hands and head are Craftsmen.
S/He who works with their hands, head, and heart are Artists.
-Thomas Aquinas (edited)-
When I was young, I never wondered if my grandparents practiced any sort of art during their lives. I knew my immediate family’s abilities came mostly through my father, supported and supplemented by my mom’s imaginative homemaking skills. All my sisters, their children, and now all their children exhibit equally creative approaches to thinking and doing.
I never knew my mother’s parents, but from pictures and stories their life was too harsh to have much time for personal expression of any kind. It was from my mom's mother-in-law that my mother gained the confidence to bring beauty into our home life.
My father’s parents had less children and more income, so when I look at the small hand plane I inherited from my grandfather, the blade’s unique slant-angle for cutting wood, cross-grain, it tells me he was a knowledgeable craftsman. Probably he was the one my father found encouragement from for his creativity.
From my mom I learned how to make what we could not afford: beautiful clothes, fine foods, a comfortably elegant home. Her values imparted critical thinking skills into all aspects of our daily life, from preparing meals to doing laundry there were always ways to make the work efficient as well as enjoyable. Dad taught us all to paint pictures, do gold-leafing, and to weld; my seventeenth-birthday gift was a set of jeweler’s welding torches.
The unspoken, unquestioned premise of my family was not about being Artists, but about being artful in living our Lives.
This website will be a repository of past, present and future creative endeavors we've embarked upon, projects not solely of my own, but those also of the children, family and friends, who have traveled the road with me.
The whole art of teaching
is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity of young minds
for the purpose of satisfying it afterwards.
-Anatole France-
