When her kids were in High School my Grandmother decided to take an art class through the extension program at UCLA. It was an afternoon class, created for non-majors, mostly made up of women like herself who finally had a little time to themselves. The first assignment was a self-portrait, sketched with pencil. 

She went home after the first class and sat down in front of a mirror, as the professor had suggested. From there she abandoned all other guidance, deciding that a portrait would be more interesting from three views, and perhaps even more so if done with paint rather than charcoal. Where she went from there is represented in the finished product — this triptych, carved into linoleum, mounted on wood, painted in the colors of the day, pressed onto paper. 

She took her completed assignment to the next class, turning it in with the pencil sketches of her classmates. The professor pulled her aside and suggested that she was in the wrong class, that she apply to the Master’s program. At once. Thus began her creative reinvention, which is now equal parts art history and family lore. 

Perhaps this piece is speaking to me right now as I find myself in a reinvention of my own, compelled by a changing economy and an empty nest to redesign the shingle I’ve hung out. The creative process is naturally one of reinvention, as we seemingly create something new each time, but reinvention itself can feel a lot less like creativity and a lot more like mud that you’re stuck in. Or quicksand. Depending on the day. 

I didn’t know my Grandmother well (she wasn’t warm or fuzzy), but I love everything about this piece and the story that goes with it. That she thought outside the box to even take that first class, that she decided to do things her own way, that her way was a more challenging process, that this portrait of herself felt true to who she was in all of its unflattering Picassoesqueness, that there are real work scissors and a tape measure on the table (her cigarettes conspicuously absent), that she included the wallpaper in the background, her 1960’s ‘do’, designed for a pillbox hat. 

I got my love of modern art from my Grandmother, along with her art books on Henry Moore, the collection of gallery catalogs she carried home from her travels, and a few pieces of her work, including this one, (which no one else in the family likes). I like to think that if she knew me now she would enjoy (or be amused by) my eye. For sure she would understand this phase I find myself in, this reinvention. This creative process.  

© Patricia Zanger