It can’t be better said than in Michael Chabon’s book, Manhood.
“We stack the good stuff in a drawer, and when the drawer is finally full, we pull out the stuff and stick it in a bin that we keep in the attic. We never revisit it. We never get the the children’s artwork down and sort through it the way we do with photo albums, and say “That’s how you used to draw curly hair…”
(I highly recommend this book if you have a man in your life, or you are one)
Which kid art is the art you are supposed to keep? How much of it? How do you get rid of it without them knowing? Like most parents, I clung to the early scraps of “art” my children made as proof of their inner creativity. So bold! So vibrant! So almost looking like a unicorn, or maybe just a giant banana with legs and a smile, but close!
I closely monitor what goes in the recycling bin, because now they do too. After finding many of their efforts crumpled up at the bottom, I have to come up with some lame excuse. More recently, I’ve just told them the truth. “I have your art coming out of drawers. It’s taking over the laundry room. I can only keep so much.” Although they are wounded, they somehow see the logic in this, until the next time they see a dragon or a fairyland floating at the bottom of the pile of kitchen scraps and flyers. (By the way, sticking it in the pizza boxes and smuggling it out works pretty well). A friend of mine stops her girls from helping with the recycling anymore, just so she can sneak it out. But what about the BIGGER stuff? You know, the paintings you paid an ungodly amount for, by way of an art class that bought you an hour’s time of peace and quiet. After shelling out an exorbitant amount of money for this hour, you are then required to pay for the stretching and framing of the canvas, to be hung in your house for…forever maybe. A few times I’ve just said, “I think we will put a frame around it ourselves” and tucked the rolled up monstrosity under my arm, much to the clucking of other parents. You can Do that? They say with their eyes, imploringly. This is a brilliant idea on the part of the art studio, one which feels like extortion, or at the very least, blackmail.
It’s really hard to say no.
Your child will get teary, eyes big as they process what you are saying. Un-frame-able. Not-Paying-The-Extra. This move comes with ramifications, sure, but I find if you distract them for about a week with lots of activity and favourite foods and playdates that they will somehow forget that you are the meanest mom in the world. Then you can shove the canvas into a long crevice at the back of the house, maybe where the closet doesn’t quite meet the frame of the wood behind the furnace. This may make the house catch on fire one day, but if you are ever asked about the piece of art, which may or may not be a self-portrait, but rather bears a slight resemblance to your child if they were ever to take LSD and shower themselves in glitter and bird like creatures, well, you can pull it out. “Here it is!” you will say, and then try again to make them forget about it.
This is the hard road. The easy road, as one of my Mom friends took, is not without its problems.
“What do I do?” she asked. “It’s supposed to be Matisse, but it doesn’t look anything like goldfish on a table. It looks like….it looks like a penis. A penis with sperm swimming around in it.” After we had a good laugh at this, I told her, surely it couldn’t be that bad. As she is much wiser with her money this was one of her son’s first expensive art classes, she felt she had to frame it… keep him going on the road to confidence. Then I saw it.
It looks like a penis. With sperm swimming around in it. And it’s hanging on the wall.
See what can happen? I have several good canvases hanging around, and a couple of crappy ones that I hang in their rooms. And sometimes, I switch things up, and again hope they won’t really notice that their masterpieces have gone missing. These are behind the dryer, they are too big to fit in the crevice. A few I have actually taken to the Salvation Army. Some very half blind person may appreciate them for the Vibrancy and Boldness!! In truth, I think they both do have a bit of an artistic side, but I have no idea if this is really based in reality or just a misplaced desire out of my own inadequacy at drawing. I have also been reminded, quite recently, of how a love of art can change, when one is asked to do a project with other ten-year old boys.
“What’s this?” I asked my son, pulling a…thing… out of his backpack.
“Oh we had a collaborative art project. We made a monster.”
Huh. Indeed, it is a monster with its head exploding with blood, saying “This sucks.”
Me: “Did you add this sucks?”
Him, turning red, “Uh-huh.”
Me: “So, did it suck because his head is exploding, or because the project sucked?”
I’m trying to get ten year-old boys. It’s a strange land to be in.
Him: “Obviously…it’s because his head is exploding…”
My mom was visiting at the time
She took a look at it and gave me a worried glance. I just let out a long sigh. What could I say?
It sucked.