'Dining Room'

My first foray into the artistic world was at the tender age of two. I created a mural on the ‘dining room’ wall of our house. I say ‘dining room’ because in actuality it was a bedroom with a dining set crammed in it. My mother was so intent on having a formal dining room that she and my dad choose to sleep on a pull-out sofa in the living room so she could declare, “We have a dining room!” just like my well-to-do Aunties who had married white collar Hydro executives, lived in up-scale neighbourhoods, with proper dining rooms, enough bedrooms, and foyers with wall-to-wall deep red velvet carpets.

We lived in a tiny 700 square foot bungalow in Transcona, my dad painted train cars at the CN rail yards, my mom was a homemaker, like all the other families on our street. Me, my parents, brother, gramma and two dogs lived on top of each other tripping over the blue shag carpeting of our two-bedroom bungalow. Which was now a one-bedroom bungalow because of the ‘dining room.’ My parents slept on a lumpy bulging creaky spring hide-a-bed in the living room, my brother and I shared the remaining bedroom, my gramma had a room in the unfinished basement that never quite got finished, and still wasn’t finished by the time I left home at eighteen.

The dining set, a dark heavy oak extension table, six carved leather seated chairs, carved buffet and matching China cabinet, had been a gift from my dad to my mom on their wedding. It cost him $120 which was a lot of money on a train man’s salary. My dad confessed that he added an extra zero to the price tag, so it looked as though it cost $1200 to impress my mom’s sisters. Proving he was a worthy and capable provider. I’m sure they all ooh-ed and ahh-ed with the appropriate amount of gusto in support of his white lie, if only to make my mom smile and him feel welcome. They were well-off and lived much better than us, but they weren’t assholes.

It was in this sacred room, the ‘dining room,’ overflowing with fancy furniture, and a plastic enshrined silverware tea service which we never used unless there was fancy company, that I created my masterpiece. ‘Pwitty!”, I clapped my hands and declared triumphantly! A big smiling face peered out from the wall. Two dots for eyes and a smear of a smile created with the contents of my diaper. It was an artistic tour de force! It created controversy, pushed the envelope, incited intense emotions from viewers, and was immediately censored by my critics, also known as my parents. Success! I don’t think I’ve ever felt so much glee. One person’s masterpiece is another person’s shit and vice versa, or so they say.

Some might declare my first work a failure, but it wasn’t to me. Unsanitary yes, but a failure, no. I carried that success proudly. When my Aunties and the neighbour ladies heard what happened, they howled in hysterics, “Oh Arlea the artist!” My mom was livid. “Oh Gracie, it’s nothing a little elbow grease can’t fix.” I wasn’t reprimanded, I was elevated. I was pushing boundaries. I was bringing joy to people. I learned that even though critics might tear my work down, or in this case Lysol and bleach the crap out of the walls, it might still connect with someone somewhere. I found my calling.

As a kid I would climb up on our kitchen counter, and press my hand against the icy single pane windows until my hand burned numb from the cold, and a clear palm print remained melted in the etched frost fern and flower patterns that swirled over the glass. If I stared with intense focus across the back yard, the broke down fence, past the edge of Transcona and squinted just enough, I could see it. Glimmering in the crisp winter air, an emerald city poking up from the flat land horizon in the far-off distance. A kingdom. My future. My destiny. I swore to myself, “One day I’m going to go there. To Winnipeg. I’m going to be an artist.” It was either an artist or a CowboyGirl who did acrobatics on horses while riding bareback, but I didn’t have a horse so I decided being an artist would be much more attainable. I probably should have got a horse.

Not that becoming an artist hasn’t been attainable, it has. But it morphs and shifts depending on the mood, the day, or the year. I have been fortunate to work in the arts for over 30 years, adapting, reconfiguring, and expanding my repertoire over and over again. Like learning back flips on horses that are running around the corral, the target is constantly moving, I have no grip on my feet, and am often clinging on for dear life. I have learned to look at the world through many eyes, in many ways in many perspectives. Some days I am vibrating in a higher dimension connecting through-out history to all the artists who have come before me where time ceases to exist and I am one with the greater elemental universe and other days I am an incompetent fraud.

While other teen girls were babysitting to earn cash for hairspray and crimping irons, I was drawing portraits of dead relatives for friends’ parents. One hundred bucks a pop, two heads for one-fifty. It was lucrative. There was never a shortage of creepy Uncles or eccentric Aunts dying. I applied to the Ontario College of Art and received the golden ticket, an interview. Heavens opened, Angels sang! I sat outside the office awaiting my turn to present my portfolio to the head of the department. Imagining my prolific career as a world-renowned artist, no, Artiste! Jet-setting around the world in my own private Arl-plane, to one of my many creative hideaways. Should I go to Tuscany, Prague, New York, or my ranch in New Mexico, dahlings? The light is always good this time of year and I could use a ride on the range. Champagne anyone?

Hmmmm, who would I invite to share my fame and fortune with? I scanned through the college space checking out the army pant and sweatshirt uniformed students adorned with paint spatter like military decorations and badges of honour strutting past while others lay confidently sprawled in puffs of charcoal dust along the halls. But the feeling of finding my fabulous future was overcome with imposter syndrome. Panic. “I’m not an artist.” The door opened, “Arl-ahhh, Arl-ahhh Ashcroft?” I scrambled to my feet, stood at attention. “Are you Arl-ahhh?” the baggy cardigan wearing administrator inquired, looking me up and down over the rims of her chained bifocals. “No. Arl-ahhh’s not here man,” I left.

You’d think that would be the end of it. But it wasn’t. I may not have received an official artist education in a renowned institution beyond high school, but it didn’t stop me. Coming back to Winnipeg wasn’t defeat, it was a sense of freedom. A small city with an even smaller art base, it was here where I could be anything and throw myself into everything. I found supportive community in every medium that tickled my fancy. In the theatre as an actor, then on screen, as a film technician, direct a movie? Sure thing! Maybe I’ll try painting, photography, multimedia installation, digital technology, I want to be in a band, let’s do that and release an album! Let’s release two albums! “But we don’t know how to play.” “Who cares, let’s do it anyway!” And we did. I did. And it was good. Each of us have a gift, a story to tell. I suppose mine is perseverance, or not knowing when to quit. You can look at it either way.

I inherited that dining set from my parents thirty years ago. It sits in my own tiny war-time house crammed in a room that’s supposed to be a bedroom but is now the ‘dining room.’ Meals are rarely eaten there, not because I’m waiting for fancy guests to arrive, but because it’s become a work desk. Over the past 30 years a lifetime of ideas has been inspired, planned, created, and embedded into its warm worn wood grain surface. The one true thing I’ve learned about being an artist, is that it’s an ever-changing career based on hope. You hope your idea is heard, you create meaningful work, you incite, delight or inspire. Granted, not every idea is great. Some are pure shite, not literally of course, at least not anymore. The next attempt will be better, I can’t count on it, but I can hope. I remind myself, “It’s nothing a little elbow grease can’t fix.” and get on with it.