The Pink Snails

When I was in high school, I took Art. We were in 'oils', and the teacher told us all about shadow and light, and then told us to paint a still life, a potted plant.

Well, I felt like the teacher was just fobbing us off. She and the seniors had a big art show coming up, and she wanted to work and spend time with them, not us new kids. So I was bored. So I did the still life, working on the shadow and light - and then I painted large pink snails, with curious faces looking out from around the plant and pot.

The teacher got pissed. She threw the canvas back at me and told me that I would never be an artist, that I had no talent whatsoever, that I should drop out of her class altogether. That hurt. That made me angry. Between that and a mother who drew cute little squirrels and never posted my pictures on the refrigerator because they weren't good enough, I had lots of reinforcement telling me that I was not, could never be, an artist. I could have taken it all to heart, but I didn't. I could have become emotionally scarred, meek, and helpless, or I could have gotten hurt, then angry and vindictive, and taken it out on other people. I did neither.

I started quilting, and started doing ceramics. I never cared what other people thought - I did these things because I wanted to make things, I wanted to use the colors I liked, wanted to stretch my horizons and see what I could do. The very first time I sold some of my ceramics, I said to myself, "Screw you, Mrs. Y!" As I continued to expand my talent and my horizons, both my mother's criticisms (that continued even after I bought the bigger kiln and set up my own shop, making things to order and selling things every weekend) and that nasty teacher's comment faded into white noise.

You see, it doesn't matter what cruel and vicious things people say about you, or your work, or what you want, or what you believe in. What matters is what you think that you can do, what you think that you want to do, and finding a way to do it no matter what. Sometimes you can use their cruelties, their insecurities, their attempts to take you down as a goad to drive yourself further, harder, and faster.

I was invited to the 12th grade graduation of a young girl who was homeschooled her whole life, this past June. We all wrote our advice in a book for her, to take with her and read when she went to college. I wrote, "Dearest Mars, there will always be people who will try to tell you what you can't do, because they are afraid and insecure. You should always listen to people and give them the respect due them; take everything they say and see if it fits what you need to know. If it does, use their advice - but if it doesn't, then smile and say thank you and go your own way. Only you and God know what you are truly capable of. " Last week Mars caught up with me and told me that that was the best advice she had ever gotten! Mars is different, considered odd, strange, because she doesn't go along with the crowd, doesn't aspire to or hope for the same things other 17 year olds do. She knows what she wants and is comfortable in her own self. But rarely do children hear from adults that feeling that way, being that way, is OK.

I still have that old canvas with the pink snails and still life. It has reminded me for almost 40 years to never let my hopes, my dreams, my desires be crushed or altered by people who have their own problems, their own agendas. To never allow their opinions, formed within their tightly boxed, tamped-down, and emotionally reactionary lives to influence mine, to draw me or to paint me as a reflection of themselves. "To thine own self be true..."