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The Great Artwork Debate: To Keep or Not to Keep
November 16th, 2011
Meet our newest parenting blogger, Karen!
Karen Green recently traded life in the biggest city in Canada for life in the biggest cornfield in Canada. Freed from her full-time job as a writer and editor, Karen now spends her time…writing and editing. And frolicking in the leaves with her two small girls. Karen is a speaker, the founder of Mom The Vote and the author of the blog, The Kids Are Alright, where she has been writing about the humorous and poignant moments of family life since 2005. She is thrilled to be a part of canadianfamily.ca.
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I hold it in my hand and think, do I or don’t I?
I ask myself this same question at least five times a week, knowing that either answer will take a weighty contemplation to come to. I sigh, and look at what I’m holding.
I can barely tell that it’s the caterpillar she says it is. No colour, ‘feet’ only coming out of one side of the body–not one of my three year old’s best pieces, and I head to the recycling bin.
But wait! What if she was being totally deliberate in painting her black and brown, lopsided creature? What if this is the beginning of her impressionist phase? What if it is actually feminist social commentary on the beauty industry and the complications of growing up in a world where lopsided, sepia-toned caterpillars have no desire to morph into beautiful butterflies and I’M ABOUT TO THROW IT OUT?
I try to snap out of it. This is not Sophie’s choice, or even one of the hundreds of truly important decisions I have to make regarding my children’s well being each week. This is exactly what it looks like: a five-minute distraction at preschool that has the potential to become my life-long burden. I already oohed and ahhed over it appropriately when my daughter showed it to me. Into the recycling bin it goes.
I feel good for now, but I know that in just a few hours, my older daughter will come home from school with the day’s magnum opus in her backpack, and I will be left once again to decide the fate of the spelling test/leftover Halloween craft/picture of her family labeled in French.
There are two parts to my internal struggle–one is purely practical, the other, purely emotional. First I must ask myself, do I actually have the space for this? Infant and preschool artwork that I decide to keep gets stored in a large plastic blanket bag in my closet. Tokens from kindergarten-on are more judiciously screened, now that I have a cute little book to document school milestones, complete with a pocket to keep only the very canonical artifacts for each year. Space is always an issue.
Next, I must weigh the emotional cost of keeping or purging each item that my children’s grubby hands create, and this is where it gets tricky. Is what I’m holding evidence of a ‘first?’ First drawing, first printed name, first handprint turkey–of course I keep these. Sometimes I keep a piece because of its beauty, and sometimes I keep a piece because of its absurdity.
But why am I keeping them?
Guilt? Obligation? To document my child’s growth in traditional mediums?
My parents kept a ton of our art and schoolwork, which I thought was wonderful, until they separated, cleaned out the house and handed me stacks of said work. What the heck was I supposed to do with all of this crap, I wondered, bitter that I now had to make a decision not only regarding my child’s early works, but my own as well. I tossed everything besides my first poem and a few report cards, both of which I decided pointed directly to my future as the genius and superstar my children know their mother to be.
I have a friend that keeps everything. And I mean everything. She even felt bad when she finally wiped off the marker that her daughter had mischievously freehanded along the wall in the living room. ‘It was the first time she had ever drawn a happy face!’ she lamented.
But this is a friend that knows how to treat her daughter’s art. A series of finger paintings were lovingly framed and now tastefully adorn the wall in her family room. Holiday crafts are gingerly stored for use the following year(s). Dozens of scrapbooks have been painstakingly created in her daughter’s honour, housing not only thought-bubble memories and laser-cut tokens of childhood, but scores of original artwork, documenting her daughter’s physical and artistic growth.
I joke that she can do these things because she only has one child, and therefore time and patience. But the truth is, in contrast to the tome that my parents handed me once I reached adulthood, my friend had tragically lost both of her parents by time she was a young teenager, and in the care of her grief-stricken, cast-adrift older sister, nearly all mementos of her childhood were lost. She sees her careful documentation of her daughter’s early life as insurance that should something catastrophic happen, her daughter will have evidence of a happy, creative childhood.
I still kinda see it as hoarding.
But then, I have logged thousands upon thousands of words detailing our family’s life in blog posts. It may not be a folder full of artwork, but it is my mirrored response to the reaching of milestones, the blossoming of personalities and the physical and spiritual growth of my children. My hope of course, is to one day have the words delight, and not burden, my children, should they choose to explore them.
It might not be a shelf full of scrapbooks, but hey; it’s a hell of a lot easier to store an external hard drive.
How do you decide what stays and what goes? Are you more inclined to say scrap it, or scrapbook it?
- Karen Green
Copyright © 2012 St. Joseph Media. All Rights Reserved.
Lovely post Karen! I have kept some, discarded most…and regret none. That said, I saw an awesome idea on pinterest (of course ;) where they took pictures of kids artwork (all white backdrops) and then made an incredible poster, with the pics!
I have kept an embarrassing amount of my kids’ “artwork”. And since one of those kids isn’t even 2 yet, you can imagine the calibre of said “art”. I can’t let go. I get attached to SO little, I allow myself this indulgence.
I too once felt the guilt about throwing away the artwork, but once my 4th child started school that went away! Now I wish the teachers wouldn’t send home the scraps of paper with one mark it forcing me to be the once to recycle it instead of them. If it’s something I think they’ve worked really hard on I will keep it in a memory box, if not it goes right in the recycle bin. Normally they don’t even notice it missing!
I can SO relate to this. I remember so distinctly asking my son which among a pile of his drawings was “a keeper” and his earnest response “They’re pretty much all keepers.” Now my younger child has entered a drawing, cutting and pasting stage and spends most of his free time in the evenings working away on one creation after another. He’s very prolific. Right now I’m keeping ones that have meaning as “firsts” – first happy face, a picture of a cat that was such a great leap forward from his previous scribbles. That sort of thing. Your friend with the scrapbooks puts me to shame, though it’s easy to appreciate how important these treasures are to her. Congratulations on your new blog, Karen!
I have files and clear boxes where I keep what I think is representative of her abilities/interests at a particular age. The first time she drew us, her first happy face, family drawings, etc. The quickly dashed off drawings? Not so much.
I also have gone to Kinkos and laminated some of her paintings that I just love. They are hanging in her playroom now.
I also hung four metal bulletin boards that I got at IKEA to create one big board in the kitchen. I have it there for a rotating “gallery” of her artwork.
But much of it gets recycled while she is at school – can’t keep it all, especially with a girl who LOVES to create.
Finally, I do have a friend who takes digital photos before tossing pretty much everything.
Very well written Karen. Having 2 kids who LOVE to draw (almost 7 and almost 5), I keep a huge bulletin board of the kids rotating art (it rests on the computer desk and leans against the wall in the kitchen) for everyone to see and for kids to beam at their handiwork. There is another pile of their work that we sort through every few months: keep and don’t keep”. Then about twice a year (when they are sleeping) I will go through that pile with a glass of wine and seriously think about what I want to keep. We just can’t keep it all.
I have framed a few beautiful pieces that are on display on my family room and I have put Ikea magnet boards up in each of the kids rooms (held up with 3M stickers) so they can rotate whichever art and pictures they’d like.
A constant process that I know will one day end when they are older and I cherish these years right now.
When S was in preschool I kept everything. Now that she’s in Gr 1, I’m finding I have to pick and choose what to keep and what to toss; of course the tossing needs to be done when she’s not home. It also depends on my mood. Everything she brings home goes into a big box and once a month I go through it. If I’m in a purging mood alot of it goes. I keep all the ones that specifically say To Mommy or Daddy and holiday themed crafts but many haphazard drawings get tossed. And now in Gr 1 there’s the whole issue of work that she brings home that she’s completed. Do I keep those or toss them too. My mom to this day has bags of stuff I did in kindergarten and onwards. That makes me happy. So far though S has not asked me for any of the stuff that I’ve recycled, yet.
Congrats on this new venture Karen, can’t wait to read more!!
I have a stack of ‘artwork’ sitting right here. Can’t do it. I’ll let it sit another week….
I throw everything in one huge basket, then at the end of each term, I weed through and pull a representative sampling to put into one largeish box. If that gets full, I weed a bit of other stuff. Her earlier years are stored in a milk crate right now, but that will be trimmed down and put in a smaller box over the next little while, too. My aim is to keep enough for her too look at and see where she was, but not be overrun.
Karen, I loved this. I am already stacking my 23m daughter’s expressionist crayon masterpieces into piles for ‘sorting’ through later. Seriously, that pile is giving me more anxiety than my bills. I too am convinced of the manifestation of my kid’s genius in scrawls and most recently, ripped stickers. Sometimes I ‘prune’ the collection down, but I always feel guilty. I think what I’m going to do is snap pics of them, pitch them (unless they’re reaaaaally good) and print them out in a Blurb book or something like it. So they can live on my hard-drive, but I can also ‘curate’ them into a gallery book. That would stop the guilt.. right?
Thanks so much! :) Kat
You guys have THE best ideas!
In our old house, we strung a line with cute little clothespins for a rotating gallery, but it never even occurred to me to take pics then toss. Of course, those pics of pics would probably just sit on the computer with the 7,000 other photos we haven’t done anything with.
sigh.
So, so true. I go through this exact thing myself. Reading this article was like reading about my own life. I have an “artwork wall” in my kitchen, and it get’s cycled. Most of the “art” disappears on recycling day, once every 2 weeks. The really great things get put in my keepsake box. Taking pictures of the wall is a great idea, even if the pics do wind up in the hard drive forever. It will be a lot easier to deal with down the road than stacks of “why did my mom keep this, and what the hack am I going to do with it?” I also have a mother who presented me with a huge folder of all my artwork from childhood. Most of it went into recycling…. My younger siblings have much smaller folders to deal with! I am the first born, I think this is typical.
Excellent article. Thank you!