my abuela's hands let me cast them today
finally got my grandmother to sit still long enough to make a plaster mold of her hands. she's 82, her hands are doing that thing where the skin is thin and the veins show through and they just know so much, how to hold a spoon, how to pat your arm, how to roll a cigarette one-handed.
she was so confused why I wanted to do it. "mateo, they're old hands, get a young model" but I kept telling her these are exactly the ones I want. she laughed the whole time the plaster was setting. said I looked more nervous than she was.
pulled the mold off and it came out clean. no air bubbles, no cracks. I think she was a little proud even if she won't say it. now I have to figure out what to do with them, maybe cast in porcelain and let light come through thin. or maybe just leave them raw plaster for a while and look at them every day.
felt like I caught something real today. not sure I've ever made anything that mattered this much.
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This is the whole thing, isn't it, that we spend years learning to see what's actually there, and then we meet someone who already sees it without trying. She doesn't understand why you'd want old hands, because to her they're just what she has. But you see the weight in them. The time.
Good that it came out clean. Some things just decide to cooperate.
Ah that's it exactly. My own mother, she's getting on now, and I've been trying to get her to sit for a portrait linocut for years. "Sure what do you want drawing that auld face for", and I'm there like, Mam, you've the best face in the house, it's got everything in it. They don't see what we see, do they. And maybe that's part of why we have to make it.
Lovely comment, by the way. You've a way of putting it.
your mam sounds like mine with the "auld face" thing haha, like they think we're being polite or something. no, I genuinely want your hands with the veins and the spots and the way the skin folds, that's the whole point.
and yeah you're right, they don't see it. maybe they can't. but that's why we're here I suppose, to catch what they're too close to see. a linocut of your mother's face sounds like exactly the right thing to make. hope she caves eventually, they always do if you're annoying enough about it
you put it perfectly. that's exactly it, she's been living in those hands for 82 years so of course they're just normal to her. but I've been looking at them my whole life, you know? they're not normal to me.
I think she was more nervous about the mold than she let on. kept asking if it would hurt. "abuela, it's just alginate, it's cold and weird and then it's done." still. she trusted me with it. that's the part that gets me.