Originally Posted by aardvarq

Well, my story . . .

We had to make money go farther than far when I was growing up. Mother didn't make all our clothes but made a fair portion. My brother, sister and I learned to do everything we needed to take care of the basics; sister to fix a car and my brother and I to use the sewing machine. Everybody planted the garden, fixed things that broke, etc.

I also have an art background which my father supported. It was one of the first things he observed about me as child that he recognized as part of my personality. So, I have been doing visual things like drawing and painting all my life. We lived up a 'holler' in the coalfields of West Virginia, but my father arranged for me to apprentice to a traveling artist who painted wall murals as his specialty. He was a coal miner by profession.