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When I was young, really young, my father offered me a potato chip. I looked up at him and said "NO NOT ME!" and he looked down at me and said, "Ginger, you don't know what you're missing.!" Intrigued , I took the bag of chips into a closet and tasted one. I stayed in the closet until I had finished the whole bag! From that time on I was ruined. I always wanted to try the "NEW" thing...or at least get my grubby little hands on it for a test run. People kept offering me new challenges, new carrots on sticks and I just kept heading toward the bait.
Occasionally I would take a little side step and look that thing over....then off I would go wanting to know what it was, how to use, what I could do with it.
At some point my sweet mother decided I needed the discipline of piano lessons. I was on my fourth teacher in as many years when we all came to the same conclusion: this is not a musical child. What I was, however, was an exploratory artist. I had explored the rites of the " child artist in the making." I drew on walls. I drew on pillow cases and sheets. I scavenged every pencil and scrap paper and squirreled it away in boxes, folders, notebooks.....suitcases. I painted on rocks, dolls, toys, flowerpots, and even the little boy next door. They ( the BIG they---- parents, neighbors) put up with just so much and then another path was decreed. "She will be an artist." Saying that much was the simple part At least I was free to explore this wonderful world without having to spend the quiet hours of my music practice session drawing little pictures on my sheet music. But then, the real world has a way of expecting real results. I couldn't provide the results without the necessary experiments. And they were messy and sometimes scary!
I suppose the worst of my experiments in the art world would have been the time I got into my brother's chemistry set and mixed the stuff in various bottles just to see what COLOR I could come up with. The end result was me turning a putrid shade of green when I mixed something that had me choking and gagging as I ran from his room.
The second worst was the life size paper mache dummy I made in our Indiana basement. I was trying to make a spaceman for a play I was producing down in the basement.
I really loaded that thing down with lots of flour and water paste. It was taking forever to dry down there and I guess I forgot about it....until one summer afternoon when our dear housekeeper uncovered it by mistake. I can't remember all of the words my mother used but I do remember being a little concerned myself when I saw what I had been creating in the basement.
The summer heat had enabled the flour and water mixture to transform (that is the polite word) into something akin to the POD people. Green mold and slimy stuff was all over this thing. I am not sure, because it was so long ago, but I think the housekeeper may have thought it was something far worse.
Experiments continued, messing up most of my living space for over a quarter of a century. But, you know, art is not necessarily clean. HOWEVER, (here comes the big revelation) computer art is as clean as it is challenging. And do I love it. I am just beginning to explore all the different ways to create, shape, change , and manipulate the pixels and the phone lines into my own virtual world.
Of course the artist in me still has its messy side. But this time it is the organized mess, of thousands of pages clipped from magazines to use for ideas, and countless sketches that I have to draw because I just have to draw. My husband reminds me that we have shelves and file cabinets, and little diskette things....and I comply. We still have plenty of rocks out back and some still get a painting now and then.
One last item. We have this wonderful dog. Beagle's are not necessarily smart, but this particular one is trying to be. Winston the Wonderhound is the subject of my online cartoon-book. You can find him on America Online in the Family Computing Forum/member Scrapbooks. More of my work can be accessed through the MGR (Macintosh Graphics) area online if you use the keywords: Ginnifox, FCC Ginger, OTFD65. I have been a member of the online staff for just a few months now and my knowledge of computers and computer art has grown exponentially since the day I began my tenure with the Family Computing Forum. Let me be one of the many who will invite you to stop by for a visit. It is sure to be worth your while.
*:) Ginger (ginnifox@aol.com)