icecream social

Photos by Billy

William rocked an Ice-cream social with his favorite band, Straight Punch to the Crotch. Recognition for mastering (mostly) the potty. He had mango and cinnamon gelato at Splendora, with chocolate sprinkles, thank you very much.

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I’m not an artist but I play one on TV

Painting/collage of me with my favorite plant, a lenten rose, by Aaron Eichorst.

I look at my first day students: twenty something 7-year-olds sitting crossed legged on an industrial Berber carpet.

Welcome to a new year of art! I tell them. I am your teacher, but I’m an artist too. That’s what I want for you… At least for one hour a week during the week. I want you to be like an artist, do the things that artists do…

As for me, I’ve been making things since I was little. Drawings. Stories. A few overwrought dance performances. I don’t know my motivation, but once I sung in front of our entire church on Easter. Believe me: my voice is not that good. I tell my students the same. Their lines don’t need to be so sure. That’s not the point, though people sometimes think it is.

I think it’s the other thing, the thing that happens to you when you’re making something. Working at it. The thing that slowly unwinds over the years of making and remaking.
Your imperfect life
woven roughly into your pitiful, beautiful stories.
Come everybody.
Come listen.
Come see.

I’m so grateful to get inspiration all the local artsy-folks here town. To name a few, singer/songwriter Sarah White, Artist/teacher Aaron Eichorst,, our amazing friend Gene Osborn, Designer/Builder team extreme Alloy, and my baby/baby daddy Billy Hunt, who is making so much cool stuff that it makes my head spin.

What are you making these late summer days???

computer doodle using Artrage, by me

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sandboy and other rainy day stories

Photos by Billy

Mama, tell me a story. Please! Can you please tell me a story? Can you tell me a story of Sandboy?

Once upon a time… I start…there was a boy called Sandboy, who lived deep in the dunes off a of a faraway sea. In tunnels he dug from warm, glittery sand.

Tunnels dug in the sand! William nods.

Sandboy’s caves were amazing, but they were always threatening to collapse. So he spent his days—along with his best buddy Crabclaw—tending to the cave walls, packing in wet sands, pressing shells into the shiny surface.

From here my impromptu stories twist and turn, often mirroring our so-called lives. A storm comes, a stranger calls, or there is a need for an adventure.

I don’t know how these made-up stories began, but each rainy day William begs for more. And regardless how long Billy or I ramble on, each story ends the same.

What happens after? William says riveting. More, Mama. More. Please, more.

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billy places 1st in cville weekly photo contest

Photo by Billy

Billy’s Fourth of July photo of our friend Llyr takes first, and this pool photo of William earned honorable mention in the Cville Weekly’s annual summer photo contest.

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kings dominion billy-style

Our Family at KD
video by Billy. Music by Eels

I’m smiling watching Billy’s overwrought video of us at Kings Dominion, modeled after those old super-8 reels of family footage, given gravitas by the soundtrack of Eels.

Instant nostalgia.

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the ostrich

Photo by Billy

William has become like an ostrich, borrowing his head under anything he can find whenever he hears our footfalls approaching.

He dives onto the bed, the couch, our woolly orange rug, when he hears Billy at the front door. His head under a blanket, hands over his eyes, his butt blooming in the air like a mushroom.

This week, at school one day, William spied me at the gate, screamed with joy, then ran and plunged his face in the mulch tracks under the swings.

I wonder, why this strange reaction. It’s as if he’s so ecstatic, so amazed to see us again, that he must hide.
Find me, he yells.
Come and claim me.
Look into my face.
I’m yours.

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sleepwalking

What can I say: this boy likes corn
Photo by Billy

William has been sleepwalking.

He half wakes several times nightly and runs-stumbles to our bed side for direction as to what he should do.

For us, there is only the briefest warning, bare feet slapping wood floors, and then we feel William’s wet eyes searching us out in the dark.

Not since those first months have we been so regularly startled awake, so thoroughly sleep deprived.
And William too, wakes bleary-eyed to the daylight saying:
Is it morning, Momma? It can’t be morning.

William has been sleepwalking, and we take turns sleepwalking him back, sleep-carrying him and rocking and singing slurred lullabies once he’s in his own bed. Then fitfully we try those same songs to lull ourselves back to sleep.

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south-cackey-lackey

Grandma and Papa Johnson

Family reunion South of the border. Man, we wish we had been there

Photos by Papa Johnson

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