AS AN ART PERSON...

A daughter is a mother's gender partner, her closest ally in the family confederacy, and extension of her self. And mothers are their daughters' role model, their biological and emotional road map, the arbiter of all their relationships.

- Victoria Scunda -
Conversations with her are beginning to take on so much more meaning. This one began with a simple silly question and answer session pinging back and forth through the air waves from one residence to the other. Tiny keys were being tapped and pings heard on both ends once messages were delivered, not my favorite way to carry on a conversation. I prefer face to face time, seeing an expression or catching a glint in the eye, the animation of a mouth in movement as it pours forth sound. I want to hear voices lilt in the rise and fall of emotion. I am a visual conversationalist.
But, not for the world would I have given up the few scant minutes in which this particular conversation took place. Of all the things she could have been doing or of all the people she could have asked, it was me she wanted an opinion from...as an art person. Nothing prepared me for the well of emotion those few scant words conjured up.
This was our cyber conversation:

*Ping Ping*

Hey, as an art person you might understand my question. What color are clouds?
(A devilish streak took over and I gave her the home school answer knowing this was not what she was seeking. Sorry, once a teacher always a teacher.)

From space clouds look white but the color changes when light is refracted through it like when they look pink at sunrise or gray in rain, since they are moisture they really have no color. Also the intensity of color can be due to the thickness of the clouds. Too scientific?

*Ping Ping*

Ha ha. I was looking for more of an artful view but right answer. Like, clouds are gray and blue and pink and yellow and plots of color.
Oh, let me try again.

Clouds are wisps of spun white sugar against a field of blue on a lazy summer day. Clouds are cotton candy pink in the early blush of the morning. Clouds are steel blue like the iron girders of a skeletal sky scraper on a gray winter day. Why?

*Ping Ping*

Better. I don't know, I heard it in a movie and wondered how many people would just say white.
Oh.

*Ping Ping*

I think of them as being gray and blue with a hint of yellow most of the time. It made me think of how a painter sees things. No color is just as it appears.
True.

The discussion continued as we discussed dutch painters and the Mona Lisa. The conversation concluded that we were in agreement, neither of us were big fans of the Mona Lisa.

I thought to myself, What just happened here? This was a whole new line of communication, a foreign form for me to be sure, but, a language she has fully embraced and she wanted me to experience it with her...texting. I never thought modern technology would be able to bring us any closer but I felt a shift from mother/daughter to friend/friend. This could have very well been a conversation between my best friend and myself.That one little phrase, ...as an art person..., kept ringing like a chime over and over in my mind. I sensed that this text session was underscored with meaning. Art, the creation of beautiful or significant things. Person, a human being or an individual. I was no longer just a mama who made things but a real art person, an individual, who created things of significance and had an opinion of value that she wanted to share.

While texting will never be my favorite form of communication this will remain one of my favorite cyber conversations, the day my daughter saw me as something other than a mother and the day I saw her as something other than a daughter, we are friends.

P.S. The photos in this post are of a piece of jewelry my daughter made. The past few Monday afternoons we have spent together in the studio, I as her teacher and she my student, making a variety of fabric flowers. She loved the necklace I made her for Christmas so much she wanted to learn how to make them herself, this is her first effort. I think she did an amazing job and she is a pretty amazing person too!