Friday thing : mystery sculpture

[former] kid art, part 3

I have no memory of making this masterpiece but it has my initials scratched on the bottom, and my mom remembers me bringing it home from kindergarten. However, it sounds like neither of us really knew what it was supposed to be - the entire origin story is me handing it to her after school one day, then I rediscovered it [probably in the china cabinet¹] when I was leaving home 12 years later. I don’t know what compelled me to pack it with things I would actually need in college [like 75 pencils in a cute pouch, four cans of mousse, my Richard Gere American Gigolo poster, and half a dozen stuffed animals]. Maybe because it reminded me of a carefree time when I clearly wasn’t a perfectionist - there is no real artistic symmetry, the sides curving where my kid-fingers tried to smooth them straight, paint/glaze so meager the orange clay shows through. It looks like I attempted some sort of design with the slash, and the hole (possibly for a flower, or very skinny writing utensil…now artistically holding old boutonniere pins) seems to have been hastily made by shoving a pencil into it before firing; I guess my 5-year old brain hoped that would make it functional.²

For the last couple decades, I’ve called myself a recovering perfectionist, which is progress from not acknowledging the issue at all but instead obsessing over every task to the point of tears, yelling, breaking things, and/or quitting. Motherhood eventually helped me see how needing everything to be just so was not only impossible but exhausting at best. Of course at worst, it was a terrible example for my kids. “Perfect is the enemy of good” became my mantra; I rewrote my standards and reminded myself daily (hourly) to pay attention to the stuff that mattered - mainly, people. Especially growing people. I think my orderly nature is still at odds with letting go³ and my children have undoubtedly inherited some of this, but I’m hoping the dilution + my efforts have helped them be okay with the good.

I wish I could watch my young self creating this thing, to ask what I was thinking. I’m pretty sure I wasn’t the kid who wanted to just get the assignment done fast so I could do something else (although, if reading time were on the line…). And I remember liking art projects, as long as they weren’t too challenging (shockingly, wanting to be immediately good at things is one of my major flaws⁴). I wonder how I felt about the finished product. Did I hand it over unceremoniously and forget about it because I thought it was imperfect? I’d like to let 5-year old me know that it has had a notable place in every home of mine, and that I love looking at it, even though it might not match our original vision or purpose. I mean, we never know when we’ll need a boutonniere pin.

Untitled, 1973.

1. Did everyone growing up in the ‘80s have a china cabinet, ornately styled in dark wood with glass doors, not housing actual china but instead a collection of otherwise fancy dishes for a special occasion that never occurred? WHY??

2. Go, young Virgo!

3. I will revise and edit this brief post for at least an hour and then sleep fitfully thinking about it then after it publishes, I will probably change at least one sentence. #StillInRecovery

4. Hello again, Virgo.