The Story Behind the Name

Paper Plate Studio

My masterpiece dangled and danced around my wrist as I skipped down the sidewalk of the brownstone apartment complex to Aunt Ev's building. 

The crotchety front door resisted my tug. Its glass glared at me as if to say, "Kindergartners are not welcome." 

I knew better. Aunt Ev loved me and I was a kindergartner. 

A retired kindergartner teacher, my great-aunt poured her repertoire of short stories and jingles into my ears every time she visited us, which was often on weekends. Before she could settle her things in the guest room, I would tug her hand and clamor, "Tell me a story. Tell me a story. Please? " Once upon a time she told them year after year to a new class of kindergartners.

She would laugh while I pulled her downstairs to the maroon kidney couch in the living room. We snuggled together. Her wrinkled hand, rich with rings, covered my little one. I curled my feet under me.

On this Saturday, it was our turn to visit her. My kindred spirit was two flights up and the old door was in my way. With a harder pull, I won the tug-of-war and pranced into the foyer, then punched the buzzer on her mail box. 

With a click of the lock, the inside door responded, "Come in. Come in. She waits for you."

I bounded upstairs. There she was, in the doorway, curtained at the waist with a lacy white apron. The drop leaf-table behind her spread its wings in the middle of the living room. Crackers and glasses of V-8 Juice sat on the coffee table in front of the couch to the right of the door.

The paper plate smothered in a tangle of purple, orange, and black scribbles slipped off my wrist and fell to the floor.  

She leaned down and picked it up, "What is this?"

"That's for you, Aunt Ev."

"For me? Oh, Tracy, how beautiful. I will hang it so I see it everyday.”

i followed her through the living room, past the tray of glass cups of custard that cooled on top of an old bureau in front of the kitchen window. Wind sneaked through a crack just wide enough for the song of the sparrow to follow.

"There," she said and stepped back to survey her new piece of art. "Right on the refrigerator where I can see it from the couch."

In the next seven years, I moved beyond kindergarten abstracts into still life and landscape oil paintings. Aunt Ev paid for my lessons.  My first plein-air oil painting of a covered bridge hung over her bed.

We still went to Aunt Ev's for dinner, though not as often. The crotchety door never stopped grumbling. V-8 and custard always bookended the meal. The wings of the drop leaf table spanned the breadth of the living room, and the bird's serenade tirelessly slipped under the window.

My first painting remained in its place of honor until, yellowed and droopy, it disappeared. Now 12,  an age when paper plate art and short stories were not cool, I assumed—with relief—she had thrown it away. 

On one of our visits she said, "Tracy, I still have your first painting.”

I groaned, “No! You do?”

She stooped and tugged the bottom drawer of the old bureau where the custards cooled.  It groaned, but opened wide enough for her hand to grope through her archive of treasures. With a slight twist of the wrist, the art emerged. Age had licked away the waxy vibrance. With a curator's reverence, she fingered its tattered edges. 

I rolled my eyes. Whatever did she see in that  kindergarten mess? 

Now, years closer to the age of one’s great-aunt, I see clearly what she saw.

A child's joy revels in creating not the creation 

That is the magic of making art 

for anyone with a kindergartner's heart.