Materials for Escape

Finding your way to Flow

Photo by Lannie Santo

Recently, I found myself decoupaging a model balsa-wood ukulele in a studio called Crafts Zone in Brookline. Decoupaging is not exactly in my wheelhouse. Mostly because it involves glue. I’ve spent my life trying to avoid anything that involves glue. Or multiple materials. Or patience.

But it was my granddaughter Petra’s fifth birthday and what she wanted was an afternoon in a crafts studio with her mother (my daughter), her cousin (also my granddaughter), and me. So there I was, deliberately choosing what looked like the easiest of all crafts, decorating a plain balsa-wood ukulele, and managing to get both paint and glue on my jacket—which was two chairs away from my work area.

This afternoon did not convert me to an avid crafts fan. In fact, it confirmed my horror of little, tiny plastic pieces that so easily drop on the floor. But it was a pleasurable afternoon watching people exalt in being creative in a way that I have never related to.

My daughter, Lannie, in crafts heaven Photo by Jan Brogan

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Mostly, I watched my daughter, Lannie, who because I was always so averse to anything crafty, grew up crafts-deprived. She was lit up from within as she searched through what must have been a hundred drawers of plastic do-dahs. Multiple colors of tiny little flowers, animals, shells, sequins, figurines, balls and beads—all available to glue on projects including plastic jewelry boxes, table mirrors, table lamps, cell phone cases, staplers, notebooks, hair clips, etc., most of which also needed to be painted.

It was evident by the sophistication of some of the projects (including delicate doll house furniture and working race car models) that this crafts studio was geared as much to adults as to children. All the many choices clearly delighted my daughter and my granddaughters as they sorted through the seemingly endless possibilities and imagined the array of potential end products. I, on the other hand, picked the first project I saw that involved no plastic and painted that ukulele so fast, the base coat was dry by the time everyone else arrived at the worktable to start their projects.

Last fall, I posted about a satisfying painting experience I had in Aix-en-Provence, France, but the skill I achieved on canvas did not transfer onto balsa wood. My plan—really, to just to get this crafts thing over with—fell apart when one of the studio’s staff consultants noted my dissatisfaction and suggested I could decoupage over my hand-drawn lily. Decoupage, I would soon learn, involved glue.

Glue and a selection of art drawn on sheaves of super thin, see-through paper. After scissoring out the flowers I wanted and delicately peeling off the backing, I attached them to the painted ukulele with swipes of the glue brush. Crafts 101, but still a personal challenge.

For me, the greatest satisfaction was finally being able to wash the paint and glue off my hands and turn in my smock at the end of the session. But I could see that not just my cute little crew but also the many young professionals who had filtered into the studio and begun projects weren’t eager to finish. Their focus on picking just the right do-dah and placing it in just the right spot took them somewhere far more serene than where I’d just visited.

Photo by Jan Brogan

They were escaping into their creativity, chasing “flow,” and displaying their pride in transforming raw materials into something meaningful. Something I think we all do in different ways, with different materials.

My materials are the words I choose as I escape into writing a novel, a poem, or this essay. In the studio, the materials were balsa wood, paint, plastic and glue. For others elsewhere it may be fabric, yarn, clay, plants, flour, metal, wood. The possibilities are endless.

What are your favorite materials for escape?

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