Many people have heard me hark praise about my parents, Karen and Tim. They both remain spotlighted on my lists of favourite people, most interesting people, best cooks, most cynical/enduring, etc. If you have met them, they may fall into one of those categories for your collection of lists. They are both simply amazing specimen, in their own ways.
My parents and I are slowly evolving our relationships with each other; I am beginning the realization that they are not perfect but have flaws and faults. I have gained their quirks from being made of their genetic materials, and also their flaws. I’ll never be perfect because of their genetic material. I’ll never be as phantasmagorical as I would like to be.
After reading a family friend’s blog post about her son being her art accountability partner, I started to understand the new role I had given myself in their lives. I am to pester them day in, day out about accomplishing something that fills their beings with such joy. For my father, he already spends all day cooking up delectable tastes for my sweet Moomah, but his mind needs to escape to another frontier. Karen suggested that he should begin a novel. My response to that idea was to send non-stop messages to my father helping him (hopefully) to start developing character ideas. I’ve been meaning to send him bullying/encouraging texts whenever I am at the studio, which is everyday for at least 3 hours during this Summer school session.
For Moomah, we are starting to work on collaborative ideas. I had created a set of stationary, which I had created a linocut for and printed on frosted mylar, and had presented it to her on her birthday. Yesterday, I received one of my cards back in the mail! It had been adorned with brown ink, and she had contributed to my design with marks of her own. By giving her a new tool to work with, her mind has started to bloom again (again, hopefully).
So even though I may not be explicit with the themes of my work to them, and they may not fully tell me about what their intentions are, I will try to pester them.
