I realize I’ve been doing a shitty job with the whole “nostalgic moments from my past” thing I said I was gonna do this month. In an attempt to catch up, here are…

Six Great Moments in the Life of the Artist:

• In first grade, I made a tiny yellow clay figure for every person in my class, and stuck them in each person’s cubby one morning. The teacher demanded to know who had made such a mess. I never said anything.

• During middle school math classes, I would make millions of tiny origami boxes and cranes under my desk. I’d store them in the top shelf of my locker, and throw them away whenever there were too many—only to immediately start a new batch…

• In sixth grade, I made my very first claymation movie for a school project. It was less than two minutes long, but I was so proud of it. This was the time period when I was obsessed with Nick Parks (creator of “Wallace and Grommit”). I taped a short documentary about him off of Channel 2 or something, and watched it many times. At my annual physical that year, the doctor asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. Shy and nervous, I said, “I dunno.” “Oh, come on,” said the doctor, “you must have SOME ideas.” “Well,” I admitted, “I would really like to be a claymation movie maker.” She wrote that down on her sheet.

• I also got really into Muppets around this time. (Actually, this obsession has never ended. I am often most pleased with my cartoon figures when their faces remind me of Muppets.) My poor parents searched long and hard to find me a cool marionette for Christmas.  The one they eventually settled on was not quite what I’d hoped for, and I ended up barely touching it.  (I’m sorry, parents.)

• The summer before seventh grade was my fifth year (out of six) in Young People’s Theater Workshop, through the Northfield Arts Guild.  This was a theater day camp I absolutely loved (so much that I eventually got a summer job working there). That fifth year proved to be my very favorite, and I was ever so sad when the program ended. To get through the mourning process, I made a Sculpey figure of each person in the play, in costume. After I baked the figures, I stored them in my bedside table drawer for years.

• For Sarah Goldfeather’s 18th birthday, I wrote and illustrated a book about our friendship. I gave it to her in the high school art room during our Honors Art class that year.  (This was the class for which I made, among other things, a music video for our band, The Killer Prom Queens.)