DOES ART RUN IN YOUR FAMILY?

My mother always pieced quilts, knit sweaters, hooked rugs, and sewed. When I was going through an intense caveman stage, she sewed leopard-skin terry-cloth caveman outfits for my little brother and me. Then she gave us some raw steaks and let us loose up on the hill behind our house where we were allowed to build a fire, cook the meat, and eat it with our hands dripping in front of the fire. I was about six and my brother was about three. She also taught me to sew, and I was allowed to make my own clothes. Trips to the fabric store were way more fun than trips to the department store. When she retired at age sixty-three, she took up ceramics and is now a really excellent ceramic artist.

My father is an engineer/inventor/scientist type of guy. He would teach us how to cook in ways that were sneakily designed to impart basic chemistry. On Saturday mornings, starting when I was about five, he would conduct science classes at the attic blackboard where he diagrammed and tried to explain stuff like atomic structure and molecules. In his spare time he always fixed old clocks and built model ships with every tiny detail fashioned by hand. Now that he's retired, he builds the amazing ships full time, and has also taken up marine oil painting, at which he is becoming quite skilled. They have built a studio onto their house, which they share.