Integrating My relationship to my Artistic Cultural Herstory.

( These two pictures were taken of one of my Blair house Apartment Free community art classes. Alfredo was from Mexico, Illiana was from Bulgaria, and the other Boy was from India and of course my Cat: Max . This particular prodject was on the topic of Installation Art. Here we painted and glued various interesting objects to the iron railing fence for effect. With limited capacites i tried to teach about the Murals of Diego Rivera and physical nature of Art
as a spacial medium. Its Cool for Boys to do Arts too..
I read stories to them outloud in the evenings in using Voice and character in an effort to help them thier English as a Second Language.)

As a child I had a full range of artistic tools to play with. Painting, Poetry, Play-writing,

Singing and Oral Histories ... looking back i got to do all of these and it was fostered and Nurtured and Taught by my Mother, who is Welsh. She never taught me the Welsh language but did try to teach me Welsh Pronunciations. One time she told me of the Welsh Name that she had wanted for me, " Cerys" ( Prounouced: Kerris) But didn't because my British Father did not want me to have a Welsh name.

But instead she told me the stories. These are the oral history of Family and place. People and thier Histories of a time past , and a Village and its Villagers, The land and its Rugged realtionship to land, weather and Sheep .

I recieved the Cultural Heritage of Wales thru story Telling and my mother fostering my Poetry Writing, The Bardic Tradition and a brief lineage to a Female Bard on my mothers side of the Family.

In addition was her love of Artistic Expression and good afternoons were spent recieving painting lessons from my mother. After some time I was set up with an " Art area" in the living where i could paint on Sunday mornings.

Mother, Mother

Teach me your language of Songs

Unfortunealy in the Personal history of Artistic Expression my Father silenced all of it and by the time We had moved to Chattanooga, Tn there was no Art making at my house.

my mother simply found another location.

My mother did extensive work at the Hunter Art Museum althought there was a tiny Glass museum next to it, my mother spent hours there with her Glass art. Studying them, Arranging them, Preparing for entire shows. Here she taught me the love of Glass, Tile, design , Arrangment, Mosiac, An entire range of The textile arts.In my teens, I spend quite a few hours working with her on Lighting design ideas for shows.