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Let Loose, Make a Mess
I found another gray hair this morning while I brushing my teeth. I know it’s a new one, because they are all unique, hand-numbered gray hairs signed by the original artist. I’m hoping that they are a limited run, though, and that the plate will soon be destroyed. This one was gray hair by the littlest member of my family, number 10, 941. No bottle of hair color will ever cover it.
How did this one come about? Well, for my four-year-old, creating gray hair is a simple, artistic task. This particular masterpiece got it’s start as a rough draft written all over the bathroom sink in toothpaste, pencil shavings, and seasoned salt.
Where does the seasoned salt fit in? What was his technique for getting that electric pencil sharpener out from under my nose? Only my son knows. And we all know not to question a true artist as to his medium and technique. If you have to ask, you just don’t get it.
Frankly, I don’t get it. The baby formula mixed in with a new pitcher of tea, I can see. The mashed potato mix added to my glass of soda left sitting on the counter? Okay that one is obvious. But pencil shavings, toothpaste, and seasoned salt spread in a nice pattern all over the bathroom sink and vanity? Where did this come from? Maybe I’m not supposed to get it. I’m sure it was process over product.
Maybe it came from the same place in his creativity where the hole-bored-in-the-drywall-with-a-toy screwdriver-every-crayon-we-own-shoved-between-the-walls-via-that-hole urge came from. Maybe, just maybe, he doesn’t like the taste of Crest and thought our toothpaste needed a little spice. If I ask him why he did it, his reply is “I just wanted to.”
Am I a stressed mom? You bet. Am I going gray before my time? Most definitely. But first and foremost, I want to be like him. Obviously my son never has a creative block. He doesn’t have an internal critic telling him what he is doing is wrong, bad, won’t look good, or that no one is going to be happy with what he has to say. He just does. He creates. If his work is a mess when he’s done, so be it. In a four-year-old mind, my little man feels just that much better if his current creation gets a rise out of the lucky person who beholds it first. Usually that person is me, and boy does his work have a dramatic affect (usually best experienced when you first walk up on it). Some art is valuable for shock value alone.
The next time you sit down to work in your art journal, take a queue from a small free spirit. When was the last time you did something because you just wanted to? I’m not telling you to take the chocolate syrup out of the fridge, make yourself a glass of chocolate orange juice, then freewrite with the chocolate syrup on the kitchen table like my little boy did last week. What I’m saying is, create something just because.
Find that four-year-old inside you and set him loose. Pull out your journal. Drag out the crayons, construction paper, scissors, paste, string, buttons, and macaroni. Get all those fun, preschool collage items together. Cut out magazine pictures. Create. Go for the shock value, original combinations. If it doesn’t make sense to anyone else, don’t worry. They just don’t get it anyway. Take yourself back to the time when you didn’t know who your inner critic was. Go back to the creative child that was there before the sensor was born. Take a queue from the little man. Just don’t come here and mess, I don’t need gray hair number 10,942.
Dorene Page, c 2005
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