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It's
been my favorite never-ending job to describe
my mother's world. With her whole life she's
taught me how to edit the details to describe
character, though her characters have most
often been three-dimensional. After a powerful
career in animation, shortened by marriage,
she worked her design education at Chouinard
Art Institute into her life as a mother. She
spent my early childhood in Illinois and Pennsylvania
working freelance as the crafts editor for
American Home Crafts, doing weird, memorable
one-off commercial projects like a line of
a half dozen 3 foot-high Orphan Annie dolls
for a Chicago store window, and a huge 3-d
soft sculpture hot dog (with mustard) for
7-Up. And she wrote books. I remember most
clearly her working on Outdoor Art For Kids,
(Follett, Chicago 1975 [TK]). My late brother
Tom and I were the guinea pigs and models
for the crafts, and the stories inspired me
to write. In the late 1970s, when I was becoming
conscious of the world, Mom established Charleen
Kinser Designs, which for 26 years was
a small group of artisans creating characters
Mom designed to be played with: toys made
by hand for an international market. She gave
teenage me my first writing job: to describe
these creatures in story and doggerel. The
production crew finally disbanded in 2002,
but for Mom's one- or two-of-a-kinds, I still
write the stories.
People call my mom 'whimsical', but like all
good characters, hers are real, and I think
of my writing about them as non-fiction. |
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