Identity: Reflecting on Childhood

Last week in my "Intersubjectivity in Art Therapy" class, we did a guided meditation to try and recall our first memory of art making/creating.  After a few minutes (eyes closed optional) of thinking about what our first creating was like, where we were, the sights and sounds and others who were present, we were asked to create an artwork that responded to what we recalled.  After an hour of creating time, we reviewed and shared our stories, and for me in particular it was interesting to see a connection between my earliest creations and what I make today.  


Specifically, I recalled my first drawings and crafts to be centered around Christmas and snowy scenes.  I would find pine cones around school on my walk home and paint them in green, red, gold and silver.  I would make the snowy scenes on white paper with pencil or pen and draw a currier & ives style scene with a winding road, a bridge and santa driving a sleigh full of presents.  I can see all the tick marks I'd make for snow falling at the end of each drawing.

So, the question I'm asking both for myself and other fellow creatives is...

(Feel free to meditate or not on your first memory if you like)...How has your initial or early experiences with making art shaped who you are/how you are as an artist and/or art teacher?

SEE MAP BELOW...And as part of my reflecting on childhood, I found a map making software that allows you to create a personal map a la google, so I'm going to create a map of important places and things that shaped my childhood growing up in a small town 60 miles north of New York City.  I might make a series of these, we'll see.  This map is the draft and will be updated over the next week with more info, images and possibly video.  I've always loved maps and like the idea of creating something that I can share with others as a part of my artistic and reflective practice.


PHOTO: My mother's brother (I think Jack) leans against my grandfather whom we all called Pop Pop, and my grandmother (Nanna) stands in the doorway to the house my mother grew up in...see it's significance to my childhood in the map below.

Identity: Reinventing Self

Tomorrow, Sunday, I will attend the first event to welcome me as a new student to the University of London (Goldsmiths College).  It's a tea for international students.  It's been much too much of a whirlwind of chaos this past month in preparation for this that I haven't really had a moment to process.  Moving to another country with a 16 month old is in a word, insane.  I think it might have been just a teensy bit less insane had Hurricane Irene not come in just days before we left NY and wipe out with 3 feet of flooding all our belongings that we were storing in my parents basement for the year we'll be abroad.

Sorry for that long run on sentence..stealing a few moments of quiet while family sleeps.  I want this blog to be all about the ideas of identity that I want to explore this year, how where I am or where I've come from shapes who I feel I am...but sitting here on the second cheapest IKEA couch we could find in my underwear hoping the shit internet service we have won't crash for the millionth time, my pontificating cells are shutting down for the night.  Anyway, I've been wanting to blog for a while so it's a start...more to come.