Monday, May 18, 2009

Creative and Kindrid Spirits!

I just found this old newspaper article written in Homedale Utah newspaper around 1950 featuring Emma Tidwell My great Grandmother.I really never knew anything about her and I was blown away by this article and the similarities between our passions

In the photo she is wearing a crocheted dress that I am sure she made herself and I remember my Aunt Janie talking about her making wood pulp flowers. I feel so honored to be part of a line of loving creative joyful giving people, as you will see that she is as you read the article. I thought my creativity came mainly from my mother’s side of the family, artists and fine musicians. And from my dad the engineering side of my brain that figures out how things work…but I guess that the magic of art and music from the Holbrook’s and the creative liner thinking brain of the Tidwell’s found the perfect marriage in my parents and blessed me with a happy heart and a confidence in my ability to figure out how to make things and sing joyfully along the way! My Mother always took us to museums, the ballet and the symphony…While I watched my dad figure out how to fix anything and everything…Indeed the Tidwell’s have spawned a long line of inventors, while the Holbrook’s, Musicians, politicians and performers

Thanks Mom and Dad for sharing the best of both worlds with your children!

Here are the highlights of the article I can't get the scanned copy with the photo to appear but I will add that when posible

Everyone who loves nature is a potential artist, declares Mrs. Emma Tidwell. Who didn’t get around to taking up painting until she was 51. At 60 she began a career in fashioning artificial flowers.

Hard work incidental to raising a family of 12 children kept her from kept her from enjoying artist hobbies when younger, although she has always fashioned decorations for Mormon Church affairs. She has been active there all her life.

She recalls an early interest in artwork and thinks nature is the best teacher. Looking back, she reflects that her first brush with creative ear was at the age of six.

Using wild flowers she could gather at a picnic, she wove a floral wreath with which to crown her best friend queen of the affair.

Lives alone

Mrs. Tidwell, who is quite active for her age, lives alone in her home on Idaho Avenue. She drew the blueprints and is justly proud of the result. The rooms of her home are decorated with her own oil and crayon paintings and one corner of her living room is reserved for displays of her flowers, fashioned into some scene from nature. Her home is alive with various forms of her art. Fine crocheted doilies cover the tables. Curtains are her windows are paper creations that look like lace. Photographs are in frames she has made. And the walls on her home are covered with plain paper on which she has painted the designs.

“My eyesight is failing and I have been forced to give up painting crocheting and sewing. But it does give me more time for making flowers” Mrs. Tidwell said cheerfully as she held up squares of delicately tinted material from which she will make a rosebud. “ I take real flowers apart and then study them for models. Then try to match them as nearly as possible when making my blossoms”.

The artificial flowers she makes are in demand for corsages, and as decorations for banquets and other social affairs. She has exhibited them and won prizes at many fairs. She was awarded a special prize several years ago at the Nampa rose festival when she displayed an exhibit of 12 varieties of roses.

Asked whether the making of flowers was a lucrative business Mrs. Tidwell smiled and replied…”A happy hobby although I do sell some of them I make them more for a hobby than for sale and I have given away hundreds of sprays of flowers for funerals and to hospitals. The happiness I get from making beautiful flowers and duplicating the real ones, the satisfaction cannot be measured in money.”

Her painting crochet work knitting and sewing are still shown at fairs in the area.

She always did all the sewing for her family of 12 children and she still makes many of her own clothes

She took a course in millenary and spent several years working in a millenary shop. She has always been a nature lover and collects pictures of scenic views. She has re produced many of those scenes in pastels and oils some of them many times to give the pictures to friends and relatives

In flower creation she has found a happy and profitable career. Something to keep her cheerful interested and interesting. She is an inspiration to those who know and love her.

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