What’s the First Thing You Ever Made, Laura Gonzalez?

As I am lying on the couch, free associating my earliest memories of creation, two of them compete. I don’t know which came first. They seem like chicken and egg when I think about the impact they have had in my current life. I cannot decide. They have common elements: from childhood, I seem to be quite the conceptual artist, appropriating other practitioners’ scores and making them my own.…

The memories are in full color, brighter than the rest. They are sensorial memories too, with tastes and touch. There is something strange about them. Could it be that they are but a screen memory, things I wanted to do? It is quite fitting that my work has ended up being bound up with elements of these two memories, writing and dancing.

I remember having a small, blue, ring-bound notebook with squared paper in which I wrote an anthology of my favorite words. Sometimes these came from poems, sometimes from songs, the dictionary or some magazine. They were written in my pristine handwriting. I always had very good handwriting, as I was asked to copy books when grounded (I should have had a career in forgery). When working on my blue notebook, I remember tearing the page and starting again if my handwriting was not as good as I thought it ought to be. Now I know that my notebook was a kind of a limited edition artist book.

I remember, also, seeing Dolores Vargas on the TV dancing Achilipú. I was dumbstruck. I learned the song and reconstructed the dance in front of a mirror. Secretly, I still do it. You should, too. It is such a shame I could never write that dance into the blue notebook. That would have made it complete. Perhaps that is the reason why I still dance it. It is a mystery.

-Laura is a Glasgow-based artist and writer who is currently working on an interdisciplinary project exploring knowledge and the body of the hysteric.

What’s the First Thing You Ever Made, Greg Stonebraker?

The first thing I remember making was an airplane out of Popsicle® sticks. I recall coloring it with a red marker and giving it to my grandfather as a gift. He was a pilot and it was an attempt to make a plane like the one he flew. Many years later I was home visiting from college and he returned it to me, saying he had kept it on his desk for all those years. A few years later he passed away, and I returned it to him by placing it in his casket at the funeral.

-Greg is high school teacher and photographer

What’s the First Thing You Ever Made, Raleigh Briggs?

Growing up, I spent a lot of time in churches. I’m what they call a PK (Priest’s Kid), but before that, I was a PAK (Parish Administrator’s Kid). My mom folded and stapled service programs and bought bulk coffee and butter cookies at Costco. Among her many thankless tasks was one that absolutely thrilled me. Each week, she stocked the Sunday School rooms with art supplies: big jars of cheap, roughly cut glitter and tempera paint, and bushels of popsicle sticks. Before, during, and after church services, I would sit in a dim meeting room and use these supplies as if they were my own–something my mom probably disapproved of, but never mentioned. My favorite things to create were jewelry boxes. I would arrange popsicle sticks log-cabin style, tack them together with white glue, and douse the whole thing in rubber cement and sequins. Sometimes there would be feathers. If you tried to keep an actual necklace in it, your hand would be spackled with glitter when you retrieved it. Nevertheless, my mom accepted no fewer than 10 of my creations, and never made me give up my habit to actually attend Sunday School. Thanks, Mom!

-Raleigh is the author of Make Your Place: Affordable, Sustainable Nesting Skills and host of DIY sustainability workshops in Seattle and Portland.

What’s the First Thing You Ever Made, Greg Stonebraker?

The first thing I remember making was an airplane out of Popsicle® sticks. I recall coloring it with a red marker and giving it to my grandfather as a gift. He was a pilot and it was an attempt to make a plane like the one he flew. Many years later I was home visiting from college and he returned it to me, saying he had kept it on his desk for all those years. A few years later he passed away, and I returned it to him by placing it in his casket at the funeral.

-Greg is high school teacher and photographer

What’s the First Thing You Ever Made, Reeve Van Nostrand?

It might not have been the first thing I ever made, but I do know I was very young.

An old gentleman friend of my parents came to the house one day. I do not think I was the target of the visit, but I guess, in an attempt to engage me, he showed me how to make stuff from rolled-up and folded newspaper.  No glue, no tape, no rubber bands, no paint. The attempt worked.  There was plenty of little boy left within him and I latched onto it. The old folks in the room would have to deal with the weightier matters.

The first item we made was a tri-corner hat. I was indeed amused.  I was downright fascinated.  He joyously demonstrated how it was to be worn and images of George Washington popped into my head.

I doubt that I ever duplicated his skill, but every-so-often afterward I would take the evening newspaper my father had just finished reading, sit down in the middle of the living room floor, and construct a hat, a sword, a boat or something unrecognizable to anyone but me.  A boat can take you to far off places and it never hurts to take a sword along with you. Having the right hat for the endeavor, well, that just makes sense.

I have no idea who this old family friend was. I do not remember anything about him or how he looked.  I can however still recollect his joy in teaching me, a very young boy, how to make something.

Each of my simple creations had a life expectancy of about fifteen minutes. The images and the joy have been everlasting.

-Reeve Monroe Van Nostrand, Jr., Financial Advisor

This was originally published in July, and is being republished as a single response.  

What’s the First Thing You Ever Made, Bruce Machart?

I can’t draw.  I never could.  Not at all.  Even my stick figures appear to be afflicted by scoliosis.  My earliest memory of a creative endeavor came at my father’s suggestion.  I was three, maybe four, and my older brother could draw, and I was none too generous in the wake of this brotherly one-upsmanship (read: tantrum).  So my dad said, “You know, boys.  We could build a kite.”  If I could translate my four-year-old thoughts into my forty-one-year-old language, I would say that what went through my mind was something to the tune of, “Don’t bullshit me, Pop.”  But he was right, as he so often was.  We collected dowels, newspaper, paper grocery bags, glue, string, ribbon, some Little Debbie treats (mandatory brain food of the 70s), and we went to work.  And we folded, and we glued, and we cut, and we tied, and after several hours, we had an elaborate, fragile, beautiful box kite.  Outside, on the first launch, I held the string taut and my brother flung the thing skyward.  It rose.  God, how it rose.  It flew!  And then, five seconds into the maiden flight, a sudden gust of wind ripped the thing asunder, sending little ticker-tape strips of paper flying around the neighborhood.  But it didn’t matter at that point.  We had made it.  We had made it and it had flown.

-Bruce Machart: Author of The Wake of Forgiveness and a new book of short stories, Men in the Making

This was originally published in July, and is now being republished as a single response.

What’s the First Thing You Ever Made, Tara Austen Weaver?

The first thing I ever made was a series of small books that contained stories I had written. The early ones are crafted from construction paper that some grownup must have helped me glue and staple together. They have colorful covers and inside are blank pages on which I wrote my stories, the first having to do with a lion and a mouse.

I remember being so proud I had written a book that could be put on the shelf with other books, though my thin booklets disappeared amidst the chunky spines. I remember wondering how I could get a larger spine, so you could see it on the shelf.

As I got older, I discovered my mother’s stationery made a better book and used up all her second sheet—without the name engraved on the top—to make my books. I hand-sewed the binding with embroidery thread from her sewing basket, making sure it coordinated with the lettering on the front. She was none too pleased when she discovered her expensive, creamy writing paper had been commandeered.

But I still remember the feeling that my ideas would sit next to other people’s ideas. That they might go out into the world and be read by people I didn’t even know.

-Tara Austen Weaver, author of The Butcher and the Vegetarian: One Woman’s Romp Through a World of Men, Meat, and Moral Crisis and the award-winning blog Tea & Cookies

What’s the First Thing You Ever Made, Paul Rucker?

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:

1. August 18, 2011 at 9:18 pm

   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?

   • August 18, 2011 at 9:20 pm

     … I would’ve kept making big snow balls in central park all day, but I didn’t have any gloves.

     Reply

2. Jenifer Ward says:

   August 18, 2011 at 11:06 pm

   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.

   Reply

3. Mary Burks says:

   August 31, 2011 at 4:31 pm

   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.