Different...and other things I've been.

My mother loved to tell this story to point out yet again how I was different. It was 1970 and my 5 year old self remembers going to the classroom excited for a new adventure not knowing it would be the last time I would be excited for placement tests of any kind even though it was just Kindergarten. I remember my teacher dressed in a lovely turquoise blue polyester dress which was a few inches too short to be flattering on her less than svelte frame. I remember thinking "boy, when she sit's she sure does have a whole lotta knee's..." Even my thought's were grammatically incorrect but at least I knew better than to say them outloud.

We sat at a long wooden table and Miss Bennett gave me the first part of the test by showing me a picture with 5 items on the freshly mimeographed page, so fresh I could even smell the ink. There was a hat, a coat, gloves, long socks and rubber boots. The teacher asked me "Tammy, what do these items have in common?" to which I immediately answered "They are all black" which made her laugh, and my mother lowered her head in embarassment until the teacher said "well I guess that is one answer, but the answer was supposed to be things you wear..." As long as I passed, Mom would have to let my first kindergarten faux pas slide and it would be the first in a long line of things that I did differently than I was supposed to that my Mother would never let me live down. It was also the first clue that I would have a life long fascination with Color.

For years, I was embarrased by this story because it reminded me of my different-ness. Oh how I wanted to fit in. Most kids wanted to be Astronauts or Nurses and I just wanted to grow up and be a Mom. The kind of Mom that my Grandmother had been to me. I dearly loved my Grandma. Around adults, she was always rather nervous and unsure of herself, but around children my Grandma was just a big kid herself. She would be out playing leap frog while the other ladies were in having tea. I loved her for that. We would have tea parties and even though I didn't know what it was, she would let me have "Champagne" which was actually 7-Up in Grandma's fancy glass dessert dishes that resembled the Champagne glasses I had seen Dean Martin drink out of on TV. I also wanted to be a "Rockette", one of those high kicking dancing girls from New York City who everyone loved to watch during the Holiday TV Specials. A dancing Mom with lots of kids and a husband that actually stuck around to be there for his wife and children...that was my dream!

I thought I would be a good Mom, mostly because I knew what I didn't want to be like and I knew I could be a dancer because even as a little girl, I was all legs. In high school, I was kicked out of gymnastics because at 5'9" it wasn't what a tall girl was supposed to do. So I was on the Drill Team instead. Being the tallest and always in the center of the kick line was as close as I would ever get to being a "Rockette".

In my 20's I learned to sew and that is when my love of colors really came to life. In school, I felt like I was artistically challenged. I would need to know what a picture was supposed to look like or I couldn't draw it and even then, stick figures were as far as my drawing skills went. I remember doing an art project in 6th grade. It was 1976 and at Cascade Elementary we were doing a tile mosaic on the wall in school to celebrate the Bicentennial. I was fascinated with the way the tiles all fit together. After I got married, my 1st husband was a rock mason, as I would go be his hoddy bringing him mortar and rocks, I loved seeing how the rocks would all fit together. It reminded me of all the pages of mosaics I had drawn and pasted together and then tore up and threw them away because they never turned out the way that everyone else was making them so I thought they were wrong. When I got into sewing I loved piecing quilts because with fabrics you could follow a geometric pattern and by mixing colors and textures you could achieve the beautiful designs like in the mosaics without the fear of crayons and paints and not "staying in the lines".

Then I became a hairstylist, not because I thought I'd be good at it but because I qualified for the Grants and could afford to go and it would allow me to make money based on how hard I worked and I could do it at home and be with my kids. Finally my fascination with color paid off. I made good money as a colorist, especially doing color correction. I would dream in color-wheel. I love color theory. Primary, Secondary, Tertiary, complimentary colors... I worked at a fabric store while I was in beauty school and my favorite thing was to put bolt after bolt of fabric away and marvel in their colors and textures imagining what I would make with every yard.

Fast forward to 2011... I have given myself permission to be wrong and to try many artistic endeavors. I love quilting and photography but I am still leary of paper, paints, paste and how to make a collage that is "right". Today I finally confessed to my grown daughter that I have been studying Mixed Media Art Collages and I have all the materials to try it but am too scared to actually try one for myself. That grade school girl who still wants to please people has held me back long enough. My daughter said "Just GO FOR IT!!! What are you waiting for? So that's it. No more excuses. My studio is organized. My fabrics, threads, paints and markers are all organized by color. Paint swatches pasted on the wall chart out a perfect colorwheel and I feel more at home in that room than in any other room in my house. This weekend my daughter is going to come down and we are going to make art together. Whether it is right, wrong or indifferent, it is going to be mine. I also realize just how many of my dreams in life have come true. I am a Mom and even though I am less than perfect and haven't always done things the way I should have, I love my children with all my heart. I have danced. Not always the way I should have but I know what it's like to dance in the spotlight and I can still kick high and do the splits just like when I was a kid. I am married to a man who will always be around because he truly loves his wife and children. I really do have it all. Thank you Stan for chasing that place somewhere over the rainbow with me.

Sometimes we all need a little push to get us going and remind us that if we never try that nothing will ever change. If nothing ever changed, we would never know Butterflies!!! I am shedding the limits of my cocoon of fear and I'm ready to fly...Let the Artwork BEGIN...