I was standing outside Robbie’s first grade pottery class waiting for the masterpieces to come out of the kiln.  The teacher was saying, “Here is a vase, here is an ashtray, here is…the River Nile”.

That's my boy, I thought. 

Most parents sign their offspring up for cultural enrichment.  So Robbie took pottery, he was in chess club, he took Tai Kwan Do.  And of course, I kept his little masterpieces.

He hates this.  He absolutely despises that I not only kept his inept little chunks of ceramic, but I use them.  I use the soap dish in the guest bathroom.  I use the castle keep that holds sticky notes to hold sticky notes. 

What a lot of people, particularly artists, do not understand is that children go through a specific time line of producing art.  When they are very young, they scribble.  They move on to a solid line of blue at the top of the page, and a solid line of green at the bottom.  I saw one drawing of Pike’s Peak that was the standard pointy triangle mountain, but with a flat stage type structure on top.  The girl had been up Pike’s Peak.  She knew it was pointy like a mountain, but there were buildings on top.  Very conceptual. 

I find children’s art charming.  I taught Kindergarten for a time whilst saving up money to go back for my Master’s degree, and I was asked to produce some Halloween art to put in the window.  I proudly presented the office with a pile of lopsided pumpkin that was as cute as could be. 

They never showed up.  The office woman sneered at me, “I threw those away”.  What they wanted were copies of coloring books that the kids’ filled in, not original authentic pieces of art.

My Kindergarten class never used coloring books.  Indeed, many art educators believe that when children fill in coloring books, they feel badly about their own art.  I sent home colorful pieces of age-appropriate artwork. 

The frog soapdish

The River Nile

Demise of the dinosaurs

gecko

So, I kept most of Robbie’s age-appropriate artwork, and a lot of it is still on display. When I am gone and he cleans out my junk along with the Star Wars vehicles and the Marvel Comics, he will find his little treasures.  They will probably not make the cut.