Family Man™: You Gotta Have Art

By Gregory Keer

In our kitchen, hallways and bedrooms hang finger paintings displaying Benjamin's early obsession with red and, well, more red. Jacob’s sponge-dot work on rustic paper plates reveals his flair for circles. Now almost 6, Benjamin has moved through a colored tape phase (various construction papers gloriously adhered with masking strips) to a period of making human-like figures without necks. At 2, Jacob has given up paper and other traditional media in favor of applying colored markers directly to the walls.

When asked why he chooses this way of expressing himself, Jacob says (through an interpreter), "I saw art stuck up there, so I thought why not skip a step and go right to the walls themselves?"

I joke but, realistically, Wendy and I are so blinded by our adoration of everything our sons’ little fingers have made that we are now up to our usually proud smiles in scribblings, paintings and sculptures. Art blankets our refrigerator (threatening to defrost all contents within), dangles from a chandelier and clutters our night tables. Running out of open space, we’ve taken to putting papers in folders, stashing them in storage boxes, and using them as bookmarks. And, the stuff just keeps coming.

After school one day recently, Benjamin handed me a bag of (get this) wet wood shavings. I try to figure out if this is some kind of used hamster litter when he explained that it’s for "creating" something.

"What are we going to create with it, Benjamin?" I asked my young Rodin-in-the-making.

"Oh, I don’t know," he said, "but it will be really cool."

Sure it will, I thought to myself before my sentimental tendency creeped in.

"OK, we’ll take it home," I said, reasoning that, after all, my baby made these scraps of oak or pine and, who knows, he might craft a beautiful work of art from them.