A few years ago, I ran a series of more than 30 artist interviews on my blog called Six of the Best (click the link to jump into the series). Some of the best responses came from asking each artist this question: What's the first ever piece of art you remember making? In these posts, I've collected some of the most interesting answers. Click on each artist's name to find out more about their work.
Donna Hapac: As a child – maybe 5 or 6 years old – I decided I wanted to make a series of related pictures of a swimmer, like in a storyboard or film strip. I took a length of toilet paper which was already divided into squares that suited my idea and I drew it with crayons.
Seth Friedman: Until I was 38, I never tried making anything that might be called art. In 2008, thanks to severe malaise and my wife's constant prodding, I carved a rock from our backyard. I am still amazed that (a) the result did not suck, and (b) the waking door to my recurring dream (a house under the house under a house) was accessible.
Svava Thordis Juliusson: It was a pencil drawing of a scene from Chaucer on a 4 x 6 piece of drywall for a grade 11 English class project. Our teacher asked us to respond to the text in whatever way we wanted, so I drew. It was awkward and provisional but I do remember feeling confident and very happy to display it.
Abigail Markov: The first one I remember actually creating would be one my mother still has framed in red, hanging in her kitchen. It's oil pastels on something like newsprint, or a kid drawing pad most likely. The paper is yellow as anything now. I clearly remember at the time trying to draw a flower with a sun and grass and such, but my flower would not cooperate, and the petals were not all the same size and each time I tried to correct them, my hand would go too far one way or the other - it frustrated me to no end at the time. Eventually I gave up and turned it into a bunny. Strangely enough, it's a rather good abstract expressionist bunny, considering I was maybe five at the time.
Donna Marsh: I remember a painting (poster paint on newsprint) I did in kindergarten because I had to defend it. The kid next to me said it wasn't a washing-machine, it was scribble. He pronounced it 'gribble'. I told him it was a washing machine because I said it was a washing-machine.
Kurt Ankeny: There's lots of art that I have from childhood that I don't remember making, but there's one piece, in middle school or slightly before that stands out distinctly. It was a little drawing on a sheet of typewriter paper, of a little skull-faced demon in a leather jacket with a huge, fang-filled grin on its face. And I distinctly remember being repulsed and attracted to it deeply, both at the same time. It was so scary to me, and that fear I had of my own creation made the drawing seem to come from somewhere that was not-quite-me.
Anyway, my mother came along, and was absolutely disgusted by the evil little figure leering at her from the page, and my father was disturbed as well. Now, this may have been because at the time they were semi-fundamentalist Christians, and therefore prone to thinking that their child might be possessed, but nonetheless it was a powerful message to me as a young person that this image that came out of me could have such power to cause reactions in people. And because of their disapproval and partially because of my own thrilling fear of the drawing, I folded the demon out of sight and pushed it under the top layer of the wastepaper basket, too scared to physically destroy it.