Fingernails, Meet Bored Kid

...an illustrated story of uncommon art supplies

Once upon a time, when childhood was an analog game, there lived a kid named Tess. She was kookie and creative, but as much as her parents tried to brace themselves for her hijinx, she always took them by surprise.

Okay, I’m already tired of writing in the third-person. Tess is my youngest daughter. She’s 28 now, but to me, she will always be the 4-year-old who popped into our dinner party wearing Lion King underwear for a hat.

An excerpt from Start More Than You Can Finish…

Lying beside her at bedtime one night, I asked my then four-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Tess, why she was examining her fingernails so closely. 

“I’m deciding whether they’re ready to bite off,” she said.

“Oh.”

“Fingernails are good stuff, you know,” Tess said matter-of-factly.

“Oh, really?”

“Yes, you could MAKE something out of them,” she said.

“Like what?” I asked.

“I don’t know, but I’m saving a collection in my backpack for when I think of it.”

I want a parenting medal for not jumping out of the bed and chucking the backpack in the fireplace.

Tess never figured out what to make with her fingernails, but later that week she found her way into my messy studio and emerged with a stunning pair of cloth and string earrings made from my scrap box. She knew I saved good stuff, and she knew where to find it. 

Of all the things I’ve done as a parent, I’m most proud of the fact that I kept scissors in every room and I kept art supplies where the kids could reach them. And I’m proud that my kids, now grown, understand that the best art supplies don’t come in cellophane from the art supply store. At our house, art supplies took the form of broken jewelry, scraps of old clothes, used wrapping paper, and Barbie doll legs. 

And, it seems, fingernails.”

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With Halloween approaching, I went looking for pictures of my girls in trick-or treat costumes and I could find ZERO.

I’m sure some Halloween photos exist among the 50k pictures on a hard drive buried under a floppy disk somewhere, but they’re lost because they’re not the BEST dress-up pictures. The BEST costumes were those Tess fashioned on bored summer days.

Her costumes were her art, and EVERYTHING was art supplies – her dad’s shoes, her outgrown clothes, paper towel tubes…everything.

This is my girls dressed as Elvis, but it wasn’t for Halloween; they dressed up for Elvis’ birthday and the day that he is purported to have died. This is all my southern husband’s doing, and I was complicit.

I’ve called you here to tell you about my kid’s fingernail collection and costuming prowess for two reasons:

1. To remind you that some of the most winsome, creative times of your life were likely dressing up and making reindeer out of toilet paper rolls.

2. To implore you to notice, collect and surround yourself with things that make you want to start something…to create something, or just to make you think “hmmmmm.”

I want you, my little stARTist, to let yourself get bored enough to see the art supplies around you. What beauty do you find in nature that makes you want to write poetry? What is something that makes you want to drag it home and keep it in a box or on a shelf or in your journal?

I’ll go first.

The past few summers, I’ve been collecting driftwood like Tess collected fingernails. On walks by my favorite lake and rivers, I’d spot a pieces of wood so smooth and interesting, I just couldn’t leave them. Soon specific shapes began to inspire me and I started making simple sculptures – angels and birds.

The hardest part is finding two compatible wings.

Sometimes making these simple pieces feels as simple as putting a puzzle together. BECAUSE THE ART SUPPLIES TOOK THE FIRST STEP. A piece of wood said “I’m a wing, find me a bird body.” I hardly had to do anything…just find couple of nails and a glue gun.

These are my favorite birds. The pieces are all just as I found them – no carving or cutting.

You can start at the simplest do-nothing end of the spectrum…where the art supplies ARE the art – by just NOTICING an image and capturing it in a photo. That’s creating!

Or push it to the other end of the spectrum where objects become materials in grand creations.

We passed through Jackson Hole, Wyoming, a few weeks ago where someone made walkway arches out of antlers. Spectacular!

I wonder how many fingernails it would take to make one of these. Antlers are kind of fingernails of the head, don’t you think? Hmmmm.

When I see things like this I wonder what Tess might have made with her fingernails. I wonder how many she had actually harvested, because I never actually LOOKED in her backpack. For all I know that backpack is still in my attic somewhere…hmmmm.