A Epic Artist

I found this folded up piece of notebook paper lying in the kitchen, just one of a million little pieces of paper that materialize around the house each week. I unfolded it and looked at an interesting, colorful picture entitled "Beach Love" on the front, but then happened to turn it over and glance at the back, too, where Luke, who is obviously working on his signature tag (using his initials, LAA), had written "I will be a epic artist someday".

This is so sweet and scary to me both at the same time. Luke at nine years old is fascinated by graffiti art. Giovanna got him a book called Guerrilla Art for his birthday, and although it is clearly intended for an adult reader, he pores over it. He watched the DVD that came with it, and when it was over told me, "One of the artists told me that when the police catch you, you just go to jail for, like, one night." I made sure to emphasize that one night comes with a price tag especially steep on the income of most graffiti artists. He has begun to keep track of the locations of his favorite pieces of graffiti in our area, and recently had a conversation with me in which he expressed his contempt for those who simply tag, telling me that's not art.

So why am I scared? It's hard to ignore that this year of his life marks halfway to legal adult, halfway to college freshman, halfway through the job I'm supposed to be doing preparing him for a happy, productive, independent life. Hopefully a life that doesn't involve him living in my basement for fifteen years after I spend 300 grand sending him to art school. When it came to choosing a major, I was the most practical person I knew. Yes, I had dreams of being a writer and living in a little attic apartment under the eaves; but I was raised by people who would have laughed at those dreams, who knew that dreams don't pay the mortgage or put food on the table. And in times like these, aren't I lucky I was? But Luke doesn't just have a mom who majored in education, he also has one who majored in film. Would it be such a bad thing to get an art degree and an art education degree, both? Not that getting hired to teach art is a very easy thing to do, but I think being male could work in his favor, and I like to think he'd stand head and shoulders above the crowd for other reasons all his own, too.

The other thing that worries me is that I feel like I should be doing things to enrich this passion and talent of his that I'm not doing. The truth is, my visual-spatial intelligence is my weakest area. Those questions on the SAT that ask you to mentally rotate a three-dimensional object in space were always my undoing. When we had Luke tested, I told the neuro-psychologist I expected that to be Luke's weakest area, too, and he surprised me with the info that no, it was Luke's strongest intelligence, and that he's actually in the genius range in that. I guess all my neurons that are dedicated to perfect spelling wandered away in his brain and started tinkering with perspective. What I should be doing instead of writing this blog post is researching art lessons in the area.

But here's the other thing...the kid loves to draw, but he's not Picasso. I love a lot of his drawings because I'm his mom, but they look pretty much like any other 9-year-old's drawings. Maybe the genius ability is dormant, waiting to be introduced to a CAD program or mechanical engineering?

Every year at his annual physical, the pediatrician asks him what he wants to be when he grows up. For a few years, Luke would tell the doctor he wanted to be a rock star. This year he said "long-haired hippie." Is "epic artist" a dream like those, that I shouldn't be taking too seriously; one that will be replaced in a year or two by something else perhaps even more embarrassing than "long-haired hippie" as a career aspiration? Somehow I don't think so. So I'm going to start researching art lessons in our area.