An Uncommon Life

Psychiatry and the pharmaceuticals they recommend to treat ADHD, ADD, depression and other mental health issues should be of concern to the parents of gifted children. It has been said (and from my own experience, I agree most heartily) that a gifted youngster often has trouble sitting still in a class room. He or she may be a bit dreamy and uninterested in memorizing the multiplication tables. She might doodle rather than be willing to listen to a lecture that has nothing to do with her own purposes and goals. To a teacher who has been won over to the dark side (psychiatry) these are symptoms of mental illness!

Having raised two gifted children, and having been so labeled myself as a girl, I want to warn parents from a position of some familiarity with the above behavior. I am speaking as a mother and a grandmother. Please do not take the advice of teachers who recommend your child be seen by a psychiatrist for evaluation and possible drugging. Please make sure your gifted child is protected from damage from psychiatric drugging. Home school them if you must, or at least find a school for them that  understands young artists and is willing to work with their unique abilities and ways of learning.

I cannot separate my daughter’s  passionate nature from her art, because that is the way she meant to change the world. She had a burning purpose to uplift society, to send it rocketing skyward from its plunging and dwindling spiral down. She believed that artists were the ones to get that job done.

When Cedar died, I felt the world had lost a great crusader for change. I guess most of us have endless  hope invested in our children’s potential. I had it in droves.

Cedar was not only immensely talented, but had an incredibly strong purpose to use her gifts to help. In her twenty years, she did a damned good job.

What effect did she go for, above all others? Laughter. Belly-achingly, unstoppable “guffawing until you” cry laughter. She thought there was too much sorrow and seriousness all around. Much of her art, and most everything she wrote was funny. Her heroes were Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin and Laurel & Hardy.

Cedar had her private sorrows, but laughter was the antidote she prescribed for herself and life in general. It’s what I try to remember when things get to feeling awfully serious, which seems easy these days.  Cedar died before the economy took its plunge and the great oil leak began creating havoc with some of the gulf shoreline. She would have been concerned with today’s events, of course. But she still would have recommended a good belly laugh to balance things out.

Daydreaming may be a forgotten art. What happened to lazing around on a Saturday morning in bed, letting your mind peacefully wander far away? Or stretching out by the river, your fishing pole just a prop while you “travel” to other realms?

It is difficult when our lives are jammed with activity, most of which  are perfectly necessary and legitimate. But I have noticed something interesting. Whenever I am creating (which happens with some regularity, out of necessity in my profession) I “space out” for a few minutes, and stare out the studio window.

Not for long. Sometimes just a few quiet seconds allows a creative bubble to work its way to the surface. It doesn’t involve effort at all. More a state of just  “being.”

I think everyone can develop this technique.  I think it is built into our nature, and obscured by all the visual and attention stealing noise in the environment.

Try retreating for a few moments and visit your creative side. Then let me know how it went! – Merry

I think of all children as being gifted. Maybe I am naive, but I cannot look at a baby and imagine anything but a life of creation for that child.

Tooks the Mushroom Fairy

It has been said that children’s art is some of the best and most creative. I have studio walls covered top to bottom with my granddaughter’s drawings. I don’t  display them just to make her feel good. I tape them to my walls because seeing them  make me feel good. How could you NOT smile at this rendition of Tooks, the Mushroom Fairy? (by Ada Rosenfield)

So how do you raise a gifted child? I am not an “expert”, but having raised a couple of artists myself, I do have some opinions:

• Do not “correct” their creations
• Encourage  their art, music, stories and so on
• Display the ones you especially love
• And most importantly, do not stifle your own creativity

Seeing a parent pursue his or her artistic goals creates  a strong reality that it can be done. What would you love to create? A child is like a sponge, soaking up the joy of creation that surrounds him. Of course, he will soak up heartbreak and cruelty as well. We can choose quite a bit of what our little sponges absorb.-Merry

Kathryn Hutton

Although my siblings and I had a rocky childhood in some ways, I  send up a silent thanks to my mother Kathryn Hutton (wherever she may now be) for creating an early connection of art to life. As babies we dozed to Brahms and a little  later  toddled around to the dramatic score of Beethoven and Vivaldi. Our walls were covered with original art and bookshelves sagged under the weight of   Renaissance and modern art tomes.

Mom was a professional free lance artist. My earliest memories place her in the studio, bespectacled and working intently on her latest greeting card creation. She was a fine artist, but to pay the bills Mom worked for Gibson. Somehow she managed  to raise four children and maintain an art career through the decades it took to launch us into adulthood. Our father, a closet writer and visual artist himself, had a lesser impact during those same years. Mom was a burning inferno of emotion and creation, a parental presence difficult to compete with. Our father passed away in 1969, leaving some unpublished short stories and several paintings.

Mom encouraged us to create. She hated coloring books, insisting that we draw from our imaginations. We also sang when we were children; my brother Jeff had perfect pitch, triumphantly humming The Battlefield of the Republic at the age of three. My sister and I sang harmonies while we washed the dishes , belting out bawdy songs we’d learned from our favorite groups, The Chad Mitchell Trio and The Limeliters. And we wrote our own songs about the celebrities of the day. “Marilyn Monroe’s the Queen of the Screen” was our most notable.

An idyllic childhood? Far from it. But  the  artistic moments of my childhood offset  the agonizing ones. Being raised by artists planted my feet firmly on a path of creativity, still my greatest joy. – Merry

Children are natural artists and playacting is happily incorporated into their daily, unfettered lives. My granddaughter Ada is home-schooled, so all her creative urges are instantaneous.

“Grammy, there are fairy eggs growing in your yard!” This was an exciting discovery a year ago, in the spring. I had been sweeping pounds of soggy black oak leaves into piles in my driveway, collecting them for the compost pile. I looked up to see my 4 year old granddaughter sitting  next to the exuberantly uncontrolled ferns growing under the oak. “Look, I’m hatching one.”

She showed me the translucent round object she was tenderly warming under her rear end. There were dozens more surrounding her. “Wow! An entire tribe of fairies must have been through here!”

“Oh yes, Grammy! I’m going to hatch one!”

Ada patiently sat on her fairy egg for another twenty minutes–a remarkable length of time for this child to remain motionless.

“It’s not hatching!” she finally wailed.

“Maybe it takes a lot longer. Or maybe fairy eggs just hatch by themselves, without anyone sitting on them.”

“Okay, Grammy.” And she was off on another adventure.

What I love about spending time with Ada is  participating in her live and ongoing theater. She is so generous with her creativity!

When I was five years old I informed my mother, with great solemnity that, “I don’t need to learn how to read because I am going to be an artist when I grow up.” I was not interested in the Dick and Jane readers we were forced to recite in first grade. What was the point of learning to read that drivel?

So with great wisdom Mom bought me The Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss. It  had a magical effect, and I became an avid reader.  I still admit to a penchant for the fanciful (Science Fiction) the surprising (Agatha Christie) and the profound (applied philosophy).

And true to my goal, I became an artist. That has been the constant in my life.

But I don’t feel “more special” than other people just because I  make a living by creating. After thirty-plus years of working in the arts as a profession, I feel more like an apostle of the creative path than anything else. I don’t care to hear “I could never do that!” from my customers. I like them to tell me what they do create. Some of them are great cooks, quite a few of them play an instrument and more than one has shyly told me that she makes jewelry!

Some of them have even sent me delightful photographs of their creations.

If there is one thing this planet could use more of, it is artists. I think Dr. Seuss would agree with me.

– Merry

I wish one of my ancestors had written his or her story. Can you imagine reading the first-hand account of how your great great great grandmother ground her own wheat and baked bread in a dutch oven in the fireplace? Or how Uncle Festos shot and skinned a moose with the help of his native American Indian friend?

If those long-gone relatives were able to read and write, they probably thought their lives were nothing special. Certainly not interesting enough to commit to pen and paper.

My own grandmother Eva journeyed to Arizona in a covered wagon, and her father fixed the broken wheel with the help of (so the story goes) Geronimo himself! At least she told us her story, but if it had been written in her own hand, how dear it would have been for all  her progeny.

Do you think your life is boring?

There is a lesson to be learned. Write your story,  and in the years and centuries ahead your family will  hear about our times from one of their own.

When I finished An Uncommon Life, I was aware that in the years ahead my grandchildren and their children would be able to share a life from the 20th and early 21st century. And this is apart from the story of their ancestor Cedar, their talented great great great Aunt whose life ended too soon.

Set aside a few minutes a day, and start typing! Sharing your story will be a gift for generations to come. – Merry

I just went to my brother Alex’s website and saw a painting that was new to me. It is especially gorgeous, and I am compelled to share it! I doubt Alex will mind, and perhaps you’ll be tempted to check out his work for yourself.

Alex is working now in New York, painting sets for Broadway and off-Broadway shows.

When we were kids, Alex and I were constant companions. We played in the dirt, composed songs together and generally ran around like little hooligans during those hot Ohio summers. In the winter, all four Hutton kids sat around the kitchen table and drew. Alex invented a comic book about a dashing young man called… Now what was his name? Maybe Alex remembers.

I’m very proud of my talented little brother.

By the way, the name of his website is huttonart.com

Go there and be amazed!

My mother, Kathryn Hutton, was a fabulous artist. Although she spent most of her life doing commercial art for a greeting card company and designing children’s Christian books (she was an agnostic herself) she was truly a fine artist. This portrait of an Angora cat is typical of her  artistic ability. My house is full of her work.

My walls also boast many luminous pastels and watercolors created by my brother Alex. Alex is mentioned in my book; he is a fine artist who works on Broadway and off-Broadway sets in New York.

But honestly, the artwork in my house that  touches my heart the deepest are the funny, irreverent pen and ink creations by my daughter Cedar. I have two of them hanging in my kitchen, and two in the living room above the piano. I have many more, as yet unframed. These stay protected in a portfolio, deep in her closet. But they deserve the light of day, so I will get them framed eventually.

It is an amazing thing to have my walls covered with original art, all created by people I have loved.

My mother passed away several years ago at the age of 90. An unfortunately, her portrait of this cat has also  disappeared. All we have left of it is this photograph, but according to family legend, the original hung in a Senator’s office in Washington D.C. for many years.  – Merry