June 1 2009

I completed my challenge today, finished one of the pictures I started (one of the 8x8 canvases I was working on). I would never have finished today if it wasn't for the 100 in 100 challenge.

I have been giving a lot of thought to the questions HybridJ sent me for my interview and now feel ready to answer them, so here goes:

l. If you could go back int ime, which year/era would it be and why?

This was a difficult question to answer because in all the years and eras I could think of there were negatives. I decided on the 50's. These were my teen years and I feel were good years because we were in the aftermath of the great depression and the second world war. Our lives were beginning to improve with the rationing of sugar, butter and meat over. Although there was the underlying fear of the atomic/hydrogen bombs people were generally better off. It seems to me it was a gentler time, people had good manners, children respected adults, we were not absorbed in TV yet (it was pretty new then), and records were just coming out with Stereo sound, not so many cars, families were intact. When I watch movies from the fifties it just seems to be a more romantic time when sex was portrayed in more subtle ways and you had to use your imagination.

I would like to change a few things about the choices I made at that time of my life, if I could have been wiser, more assertive and brave at the time and stood up to my parents and the school counsellor when they told me I wasn't smart enough to go university to be a teacher. I was two years ahead of the students in my class because I had skipped a grade and started school at the age of five because my birthday is Dec. 30. This decision completely changed the course of my life. I wonder how different my life would have been had been encouraged to go to university. I did finally go to university and graduated at the age of 53. I graduated after the first two years with a Diploma In Arts with Distinction. So, not so dumb after all.

2. What lesson(s) have you learned as a woman that you would want to impart to other women?

The most important lesson I have learned is to not give your power away when you are in a relationship. Woman so often give up their own lives when they get into a relationship and when they are raising children they don't make time to take care of their own needs and pursue their own dreams. Also, have the skills to support yourself before you get married so you are not trapped by your financial dependence on your partner. Your partner could leave, your children will leave eventually and it's imperative that they don't take you with them when they leave because your whole life has been about them.

3. What was your favourite game/toy when you were a little girl?

I don't know that I had one favourite game or toy. I liked playing dolls and dress-up in my mom's clothes and drawing a house on the road in front of my house in chalk. Playing Peggy under the street-light after dark and once the boy next door made pathways all around the dirt pile left from digging the earth out for the foundation of a new house. We played for hours running around those paths. We had plum eating contests and whoever ate their plum the fastest won a plum for a prize. I loved climbing trees. I loved to draw and colour.

So no real favourite.

4. What is the significance of your art projects to you?

It is a way to express the way I feel about things, the way I see the world and to play with colour. I love colour!!!

5. What art object or artwork would you make from below items:

Multi-Colour Post-It Notes - a collage with notes to people I love.

Maple Leaves - I once made a collage of large maple leaves with a spider web over it in silk thread. I use maple leaves and other leaves to decorate candles and also use them to make cards.

Electric Cables - I don't have a clue.

Candles - I drip beeswax over six-inch candles, tie raffia around them and attach star annis and cinnamon sticks. I used to make candles, molding some in sand and some were made in plastic molds. I sold them on a market stall in England.

Paper Clips - Sorry don't know what to do with these either.