Outside Inside

A few years ago, I was challenged to use a container to artistically illustrate my greatest fear. It came to me right away that my greatest personal fear is seeing swinging belts. When I was a child, I grew up in a typical, happy, loving 1950’s family on the outside. However, on the inside we were a frightened, tense, angry family. Therefore, this deeply personal mosaic shares my hidden childhood experience, one that unfortunately happens often but is rarely spoken about.

One of my scariest memories is when my father made my sister and me sit on the couch and watch while he paraded my naked brothers in front of us after they had been whipped with a belt. Their bodies were shaking with pain and fear and covered with red welt marks. My father was a stateside army captain during World War II, where drinking was the norm. He came home, married, and had four children in six years, who did not jump at his every command, which made him angry and violent. In my thirties, I learned that my dad was a functional alcoholic, which helped explain his erratic behavior. This knowledge allowed me to eventually move into forgiveness as he aged.

Fortunately, as a grown woman, I have been able to heal some of my fears through parenting my own four children. My husband and I made a commitment early in our marriage to never hit a child for any reason, thus stopping the horrible cycle of abuse from continuing onto the next generation. We are very proud to have succeeded in that goal. 'Outside Inside' represents all the confusing messages that my siblings and I received in our childhood years.

The three fused glass sayings on the blue sides are actual good advice quotes from my dad. The small birds represent our extended family’s safe and happy beach cottage named, 'The Bluebird.' The pink flowers are from my dad’s rose bush. When in season, he would put a beautiful pink rosebud on his suit jacket lapel each morning before he went to work. The round red fused glass pieces are tomatoes which he lovingly grew every summer. The big yellow flower indicates the blossoming creativity in the house from my mom, who was an amazing seamstress and needlepoint artist, when she was not stressed, angry, or trying to chase and hit us with a black plastic Zorro sword. There are six hearts in the peak and again on the roof designating my two parents plus their four children, trying to survive together.

The words on the front repeat one of my dad's not so friendly sayings: "Outside it's a democracy, inside it's a dictatorship." The front side represents darkness and fear, with two belts held together by a key-shape from his large collection of tie tacks. The belts cross over each other and hang out of the doorway showing my greatest fear leaking out into my future. Every night, my dad needed his ‘scotch on the rocks’ poured and ready for him when he walked in the door from work at six o’clock. There is a shot of scotch placed deep inside the mosaic house. The two doors are tiled with sharp toothpick points representing the off-white prickly, sharp, painful vinyl wallpaper that my mother had installed in the hallways and on the staircase walls, to ensure that we children did not get the walls dirty. Consequently, there was no love lost amongst any of us when that house was finally sold.