I Made a Mess:
As a child, like most, I was curious. I was not afraid to try something different, or take chances. Even with limited resources, children will find ways to be creative. One of the first things that I made used crayons melted on the living room’s gas heater. I would mix and combine big pools of color made from molten wax and pigment. When I think about it now, the fumes were probably toxic, and it was probably not smart to play around the gas heater. On the other hand, I was really was proud of my discovery.
-Paul Rucker: Musician, composer, visual artist
This has been updated since it was first published.
4 Responses to “What’s the First Thing You Ever Made, Paul Rucker?”
scott schuldt says:
I grew up in Minnesota on a block that might have had 15 kids about my age. We played outside, a lot. I miss snow more than anything. We built snow forts, dug tunnels and made snowmen if we didn’t have something better to make. My grandmother lived on a lake and the wind would build up a 12 foot high drift next to the house…it brought out the termite in us. A few years ago I was in New York City during a heavy snow of perfect “snowman” snow. I rolled a ball of snow in Central Park until I couldn’t push it anymore…it was 5 feet in diameter. It felt good. It seemed weird that everyone else wasn’t doing the same…don’t they know?
… I would’ve kept making big snow balls in central park all day, but I didn’t have any gloves.
Jenifer Ward says:
Scott, I grew up in Arkansas (where snow was rare, but then resulted in “snow ice cream’–until someone made us all askairt of the possibility that it was “radioactive”). I lived in Minnesota for 12 years as an adult, and often stood in my window lamenting all the things I would have made with that snow as a kid.
Mary Burks says:
Tents…tents…tents…growing up in the south we were always running around in the great outdoors, night and day. But in the “winter” months, all 2 of them, we played inside. I don’t remember tons of traditional art stuff being available, but we had lots of sheets, blankets, chairs and anything we could think of that would support cloth– and the tent construction took over the whole interior of the house. That is probably where my love affair with textiles as a maleable medium was first experienced. It was great fun. I need to go build a tent right now.