Art + Words + Images

Way Back When. Before discussing art, I want to provide some context on my early formative years.  For the record, I consider every day of my life part of my formative years.  We never stop learning from our life experiences. We continue to reframe our past based on our ever-changing perspectives.

I am the seventh of seven children in my family--the “baby.”  My mother was the sixth of seven children in her family. I had two sisters and four brothers. My closest sibling growing up and now is my sister. She, as my mom, is the sixth of seven. Being only a year apart and the youngest, we are, in some ways, like twins. I had many aunts, uncles, and cousins around while growing up.  My childhood was influenced by the culture of 1960's & 1970's Anchorage, before the pipeline boom, cell phones, and computers.  Anchorage was a young city and we were the youngest.  We had a choice of three TV stations on a single black-and-white TV set. As kids, we spent as much time outside as possible and went camping a lot with our aunt and uncle.  We loved fishing the streams and sitting by the campfire.  Every holiday and birthday was a large family event.

We lived in a small house and never had a lot of money, but we made do.  We didn't think about money too much, as we were too busy playing with our neighborhood friends, playing games and sports, doing chores, or hanging out by the streetlight to extend the fall days.  If we got a dime or a quarter, we'd walk up to the gas station and buy candy from the vending machine.  I had a paper route, as did my sister and brothers.  We delivered newspapers throughout the neighborhood in darkness and cold of the winter and everlasting daylight of the summer.  We stayed busy.  Our house seemed to be kid central.  We always had friends hanging out there, and we loved spending time with them. When it was raining or super cold, we'd play board games in the living room.  My mom was very tolerant of our shenanigans and seemed to enjoy having the neighbor kids around, since she could at least keep an eye on us.

I was 20 years old when I went off to college, and my life changed--both in terms of the world itself and how I saw myself in our family and in the world.  But, at the end of the day, I was, and still am, the seventh of seven children and forever my Mom's "baby."