Lettering and a Painting
Life has been moving fast lately. Chris has been gone on a business trip, so I’ve been momming and dadding it (to varying degrees of success) for a week now. Typically, when we’re both home, life is very much a partnership and Chris is an active, hands-on dad, so we’ve all missed him this week. He should be home soon, and it will be nice to get back to routine. Routine completely goes out the window when it’s on me to keep the household going entirely. I really depend on him to keep all the balls up in the air.
One of the things that’s quickly become part of my routine is hand lettering practice every night. The kids have started to love practicing with me, which is a delight. It’s relaxing and fulfilling to sit in silence, all scraping away at the letters together. Jamisen scores and grades his letters that he freehands. Lily traces my pre-done letters and is learning great muscle control. Her attention span is much much shorter (as per her younger age), so she often starts to doodle or draw long before Jamisen and I are done. I’ve always liked crafting and creating with other people and it’s exciting to see a new horizon soon to come when the kids can create alongside me (as opposed to me directing and setting things up for them).
We also just re-acquired a painting for our home that we had originally commissioned in 2010. One of our good friends, artist Julia Clifford, was raising money to fund a film production she was doing, and we were thrilled to support her work through buying a painting. The film was on the civil rights movement and the role children played in the sit-ins (trailer here).
It was such a large painting that the canvas had to be built inside our former condo. So when we moved, it stayed with the condo. Imagine our surprise when we saw the painting had made it out of the condo (still not sure how!) and into an art auction to benefit our local arts museum. We were delighted when we got the painting back to our home and got to contribute to another good cause (documenting tribal languages about to be lost). We hoisted it into the house through a complicated pulley and lever system. We still need to hang it on the wall (another complicated task to tackle this weekend), but the painting is bright and beautiful and makes us smile.