art
Family-themed art is a look into one's living room; it depicts celebration, crises, and the quiet moments of familial interactions.
Hands To Work
“HANDS TO WORK, HEARTS TO GOD,” read an embroidery on my mother’s dining room hutch, tucked behind her spools of thread and stacks of phone messages scrawled out in hurried script. My mother always admired the dedication to quality and craftsmanship in Shaker design. Many of the furniture pieces in her home were Shaker style. Simplistic, yet functional, this made for a wise choice when raising seven children. As the youngest of the bunch, I got to stick around while everyone else headed off for their miscellaneous endeavors. I spent a lot of time in that dining room looking over the items that represented my mother’s love for crafts. This embroidery she made years before I was born with the saying synonymous with the Shaker lifestyle proved to me that there’s a rich history in craft practices. One that I was only beginning to discover…
By Sam Tannenbaum5 years ago in Families
7 Bins of Fabric
I remember watching as a young girl, watching our Filipina Seamstress making outfits for my Mom and taking that inspiration to my Raggedy Ann sewing machine to make clothes for my dolls. That started my love of sewing but unfortunately, it didn't stick. I had forgotten over the years how much I enjoyed sewing and making things. I managed to make a few projects over the years but mostly the machine collected dust as marriage and kids took over my creative attention. Then May 29, 2020 changed things. I received the call that my Mom had passed away suddenly and without notice. She was in her sewing room surrounded by her many treasures and fabric. She was actually working on a quilt for one of her grandkids for his graduation and also planning a quilt for my daughter’s wedding that was put off because of… well COVID. So in the midst of the pandemic, I had to travel out to Oregon from Maine for my Mom’s funeral and to clean out her craft room. My stepdad didn’t know what to do with any of it and I needed to have her things surrounding me. It took a week to go through everything and get it ready. There were days in that week that I would just sit in the middle of everything and just sob, a creative loving soul gone too soon. In a 7X7 cube I packed up her treasured embroidery machine, all her sewing knick knacks, gadgets and 7 large bins of fabric and sent it off to the basement of my “in-laws” house in Maine..... and there it waits for me.
By Barbara Klein5 years ago in Families
The legacy project
I’ve always considered myself a creative. It’s in my genes (not my jeans), really. My mother always joked that it skipped a generation with her, but she sold herself short. She marched to the beat of her own drummer and she oozed creativity out of her cool, hippie chick self. Think long flowing hair and skirts, embroidered denim jackets and handmade silver jewelry. We lost her too soon, but her legacy is alive and strong .
By November Rawlings 5 years ago in Families
The Rain Star Babies Paper Doll Story
Who would have thought that tapping into my creativity and a pair of good scissors would help me find my happy zone and greatly impact my healing journey. My name is Nathalie, I’m an RN by profession with proclivity to arts and crafts on the side. When I became pregnant with my first child back in 2005, I wrote “The Rain Star Babies”, a short fairytale-like story about babies inspired by my pregnancy and I started illustrating them with a goal to turn it into a real book. Juggling motherhood, a career in nursing and my book project was not an easy feat, my favorite project was put on the back burner.
By Nathalie Lopez5 years ago in Families
My First Doll
My three brothers and I grew up in Central Java, Indonesia.I was the third child, and we were all two years apart. My parents would only buy toys that all of us would play with, and those toys were for all of us together. We had army toys, matchbox cars, marbles , kites…. but we never had a doll.
By Melia Raharjo5 years ago in Families
For the Love of Cardinals
Two of my earliest auditory memories are the gentle pop and dragging noise that my grandmother’s cross-stitching needle and thread made as she worked on her projects, and the accompanying snip snip sound when she finished a block of color and cut the floss from the frame. My grandmother was a skilled crafter, a product of a childhood spent in Depression-era Appalachia. She could turn anything, even nothing but a few scraps, into a beautiful decoration or a useful tool. She quilted, crocheted, sewed, and more, but the talent that stood out the most to me as a child was the cross-stitching. My aunts and mother all had framed cross-stitch wall hangings and dishtowels that my grandmother had covered with intricate designs. A common theme of her projects was Americana, but birds and flowers made frequent appearances too. These beautiful works of art flood my early memories, even though I was a child surrounded by handmade crafts of all varieties.
By Katarina Kurtz5 years ago in Families
Creating a Child's Paper Paradise
Growing up, my brother and I have always craved creativity. Whether constructing spaceships out of cardboard boxes, drawing outside the lines in homemade coloring books, or using markers to paint on our faces, our imaginations ran wild. We were just as wild, and our parents needed to keep our butts in seats and the mess to a minimum. That is where construction paper came in, and our love for it was immediate.
By Antonio Tovar5 years ago in Families
Lessons Learned from a Discarded Bridal Gown
Sometimes life just teaches you the hardest lessons, even if you are not ready for them. In 2013, my husband of more than 30 years walked into our living room and announced that he did not want me, or any of my “stuff”. Clearly we had been having some rough spots, but divorce never entered my mind. Events happened quickly and before I knew it, I was packing up our belongings to move on to the next chapter. He left all of that to me…the memories, the tears, the hurt.
By Terry John5 years ago in Families
