artistic genes

Alice at Naptime and The Rabbit Hole of Maternal Love

Naptime- those words evoke a sense of peace and calm. Calm if you are the one indulging in a nap – but even more tranquility if the sleeping person is your busy little toddler.

Alice at Naptime is the sweet and dreamy latest book by Canadian artist and mom, Shea Proulx. Moms with children of all ages will delight in pouring over the colourful depictions of the sleeping child, and will lose themselves in the narrative carefully created for adults and children both. In this graphic story a baby’s naptime gives the mom a welcome chance to turn away from its need of constant attention but the artist simply can’t – the baby is her muse.

As Shea Proulx says she, “spent her twenties going to forest-raves, living with a lot of strange people, and becoming over-educated at Emily Carr and UBC. Immediately after graduating with an MFA she discovered that she was totally pregnant…  At its core, Alice at Naptime tells a universal story, of a parent pining for past freedoms, while simultaneously descending down a rabbit hole of all-encompassing maternal love.”

It’s the perfect book for new moms, artist-moms, moms we’re grateful for – and admirers of all of those. Anyone really – moms, dads and children – can lose themselves in the artwork that winds around itself in an ever changing pastel wonderland to the tales end. The book is available in hard and soft cover or a limited edition gift set that includes the hard copy with a signed book plate, two charming pins, and a special chocolate bar – a Mother’s Day present extraordinaire.  Available from the publisher – Renegade Arts and Entertainment.

Alice at Naptime can also be ordered from all your favourite book sellers (which include some in the UK) and Indigo and Amazon.ca Alice at Naptime

We Shot the Messenger and Seat 11E

 

The whole thing started with a red-haired guy being in 11- E – which was my seat – on a flight to Vancouver. This dude had a friendly face and told me to take the seat beside him, because someone was in his and the attendants would work it all out. Ergg, I was already frustrated because I had just left the book I was immersed in, about staying in your creative zone (news flash: turn off your cell), at an airport coffee shop.  As the plane lifted into the early winter sky I heard the guy tell the woman to his left that he had a company called Creativision.  What? Creative what? My ‘a synchronistic thing is about to happen instinct’ was tingling.  His name was Shawn MacDonell and he gave me details about his company @_creativision sparking my curiosity. Shawn has the gift for releasing your story from you in a simple manner and soon it was me telling this stranger in 11 E enough about my family of six for him to catch-up to me in the luggage area and say, you and your kids should have a web site. People like stories like yours.

We all thought it was a fun concept but who would have thought that wrestling everyone into agreeing to a name would be such a huge biggest hurdle. That alone made us realize that  www.weshotthemessenger.com would require a whole lot of familia give and take, and devine amounts of patience.

Life is funny, right? The people that we seem destined to meet come to us in novel ways.  I must have told Shawn in 11-E about Text Me, Love Mom; Two Girls, Two Boys, One Empty Nest – my book about that stage of life when you switch from taking care of a kids-me-on-boatbunch of rambunctious, hungry, lovelorn teenagers in your home – to instead longing for their attention, or guiding their insane mishaps as they stretch out into the world alone.  But over that pack of teeny pretzels and a peppermint tea I yakked more about how those four kids were now all in some way or the other involved in the arts, which led him to suggest the web site for our “genetically intertwined media group”.

Rose, my youngest daughter, had a childhood dream to be a singer, her brother, Levi, aspired to be the person at the drive-through window who gets all your money, her brother, Kyle, imagined being a stuntman as a kid, and my eldest daughter, Shea, was an artist from the moment she picked up her first purple crayon. 4-kids-rose-baby Click, click, click into the present and the would-be singer is a photographer; the McDonald’s window guy performs stand-up comedy and writes for film, the stuntman became the guy filming the stunts, and is now a filmmaker, and the eldest, well, she never really changed. They all thought the web site was a compelling idea, (er – I think they did – nothings easy-peasy with five bosses) but in the mean time we hired Shawn and Creativision to push us to define our goals and to create fun promotional tools on earlier projects.zoecolehudsonlily icons

Fast forward three years and finally the web site exists. My kids are an independent lot and work solo or with artists in their chosen fields, but remarkably they do come together – even across long distances to share ideas, applaud new creations, boost each other’s brave artistic egos and have been able to collaborate occasionally – the best of these was a daring comedic film, Disabled and Dangerous, written by both Levi and our funny friend, Barry Varga, to raise funds for ALS, which Barry has since fallen victim to. Kyle and his company filmed the short comic movie, Shea did storyboards and Rose, Levi, and I mobilized a community of stunning volunteers. Their dad acted in it (quite valiantly) and was an executive producer.D and D leaving bank with cops

The kids (aside for supplying me with two-hundred pages of ‘Oh my God, she’s/he’s where? Doing what?’ in Text Me, Love Mom, also made hilarious promo videos for the book. Shea painted the wistful cover and Rose flattered me with her photograph for the back. Rose takes photos for all of us when asked, Levi writes scripts for Kyle, Shea storyboards for the guys, we must all be part of Levi’s stand-up muse.  Babysitting Shea’s little girls so that she can make art, also results in a lot of art, though the little girls and I do not have dramatically different levels of raw talent. It all goes round and round in a whirl of cooperative artistic nepotism. Shea says, that even when we’re busy on our own projects, We Shot the Messenger’s purpose is so that they can cross-pollinate.  Need a photographer?  Check out my sister. Want to see Vancouver’s funniest comic – you gotta see my brother?  Looking for a film maker? Turns out I have this other brother. Need a mural? A painting? Or the most unique grownup colouring book? I have an older sister. And our mom – she wrote a book about the bunch of us.  4-kids-on-driveway-best You have to see the ABOUT page and the BIOS.  We’ve each independently worked out how to assemble a website over the years, but this one was put together by Shea because she’s the easiest of my children to bribe into doing things. I just dangle a night without her darling daughters under her nose, and bam, look who shows up in my kitchen ready to work.easter 2012-ish-22

It took forever and a day to come up with the name –  www.weshotthemessenger.com  Click on CONVERSATIONS in the menu to read that wild funny ride.  It will give you a feel for the stubborn, comedic, annoying, love we bounce around. The site will grow, it’ll change, we’ll argue some more, I’ll post dumb mom things and risk being booted out. Like us on the www.facebook.com/weshotthemessengermediagroup/   and follow us on Instagram @weshotthemessenger and twitter @weshotmessenger. It’s been a delicate operation, encouraging my kids to create all this, because actively endorsing something taints it with uncoolness. But they’re not afraid to shoot the messenger. As long as I’ll let them mock me every step of the way, they’ll take an idea, and run with it.

*a gazillion thanks to the guy I married, who stands behind us all.

 Honouring the Mother of A Good Man

How in this Mother’s Day week could I not mention the mother of my husband – the woman who raised him and his siblings and taught them to be the good, kind and strong people that they are. My mother-in-law has an ultra-adventurous spirit and unlike me, who has called the same city home for most of my life, she has followed her urges to shake things up and change – if not cities and provinces, at least houses. Yesterday I spoke of the gardening gene passed from soul to soul from my grandmother. My husband’s mom is a brilliant artist and this talent has come to life in my daughter and even my small granddaughters. From the three-year-old to the eighty-year-old you can’t hold them back from their creativity, bent over their canvases  all of them can fill an afternoon creating vibrant and wildly imaginative masterpieces, comfortable to focus completely on their muse. thumbnail_FullSizeRender (1)

 

So the question for the Text Me, Love Mom quiz today is:  Where has Zoë moved to when her nervous mom thinks, “What I feared, of course, is that she would move in with a shoddy bunch of eccentric artists who had gone far beyond body piercing, wouldn’t even have parents, and would hardly let me darken their doorstep.”

Answer in the comments section.  The person with the most correct answers this week will receive a signed copy of Text Me, Love Mom, Two Girls, Two Boys, One Empty Nest – available from Amazon and other online book sellers.