Amazing Moms: 'Embracing Creativity'

In honor of Mother's Day, Wisconsin Patch is running a story about an "Amazing Mom" once a day this week. Our next Amazing Mom comes from Scott Anderson, Milwaukee Regional Editor for Patch.com. Have an Amazing Mom? E Mail Scott.Anderson@patch.com and tell us your story!

If someone asked me to explain my mother in one word, I would choose the word "creative."

Several years ago my faith community hosted an art project day for women. The objective was to get a group of moms, daughters, friends and perfect strangers together to work on creative projects.

After the event, my mom came back with an amazingly-decorated stain-glass mosaic flowerpot that she did by hand.

It was a reminder of what I had known from my childhood: that my mother was creative, artistic and had a good eye. When I was younger, I'd hear things like, "when your mom was a kid she was a great artist," or "she could have easily been a graphic designer."

I know some women who have a thriving creative practice, yet even more who do not. The daily grind of life, and the dynamics of family relationships can either support or hinder that kind of practice.

My mom always put her creativity into the things that she did, whether it is as a hairdresser, avid gardener, or as my 6-year-old daughter's official fashion designer, but it was always in the service of others and woven into the fabric of life.

And then one day, my mother took a step into the unknown and started a new creative practice of her own. She bought a pine birdhouse from the local hobby store, collected some fabric, sequins, other ornaments and adhesives and hand-crafted her first designer birdhouse.

Now, a couple years later, she's bending, shaping and transforming sourced materials into creations that can only be called her own. In a way, her creative practice has transformed her as well.

She's pushing herself to come up with new design ideas, thinking of even more unlikely sources for materials, harnessing the unexpected to create the dramatic and surprising.

She's exploring new concepts, embracing uncertainty, working with her hands to develop new techniques and skills and expanding her creative intelligence.

That creativity has always been there.

Love, Scott

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