(confession time)
Sometimes I imagine retiring from teaching and following my family’s business of custom woodworking. Pretty classic right? You can take the girl out of the small town, but you can’t take the small town out of the girl. During these moments, I wonder if I’m feeling homesick, tired of staring at a computer screen everyday, or just want to fulfill all of my mid mod fantasies.
When this happens, I can usually work out my woodworker daydreams through drawing. Since I could remember, I’ve been designing and building furniture with my Dad. This taught me at a very young age the importance of accuracy, perspective, and using a straight-edge. As my Dad would only complete the final project if the drawing was correct.
Throughout the years he’s built every desk I’ve ever used; childhood bedroom, college apartment, and now my home studio in Denver.
We’ve also designed together my dining room table/kitchen island, bed frame, countless art frames and canvas stretchers during art school, and now a new deck outside my studio door.
Ask my Dad about being creative and he’ll tell you that I'm the artsy-fartsy one.
But I know better.
Because, I remember Corita’s quote, “Not all of us are painters but we are all artists. Each time we fit things together we are creating - whether it is to make a loaf of bread, a child, a day.”
She offers us a direct, yet comforting, look at what it means to be an “artist” - a title even painters sometimes struggle with. We are all artists.
Whether your work is making pickles from your garden, caring for your children, or transforming a space with woodworking - these are all acts of creative expression. It’s the years of experience and learning that sharpen how well the final outcome is. The art, however, comes in the amount of love we put into whatever we create.
That’s what I believe Corita means.
Oh, gosh, I got choked up reading this and the way you and your dad influence and love each other.