Forget Me Not.

I thought that, because this is a blog about our etsy shop, I might write a little about a few of the prints I have posted and the stories behind them. Interesting? Well, we'll see. Today I'll talk about the print "Forget Me Not", becuase it was the first one I actually completed for the shop. Which seems like forever ago.

When Katie told me that she and Michael would be adopting from Ethiopia I was thrilled. Then came the realization of everything that would be involved in that. Long and short term. And especially the financial part of it. When I suggested that we open an etsy shop, I heard it come out of my mouth, and I may as well have said "Well Katie, let's just start a heavy metal band. People will love it." It seemed a tiny bit ridiculous, but it also sounded like such an amazing challenge--so I couldn't pass it up.

I played around with various ideas for several weeks, and nothing seemed to work. I would do something, scan it, send it to Katie, she would be her kind, supportive self, but we both knew it wasn't right. She finally told me that the prints should be centered more on adoption, and on Ethiopia. I began researching and looking at photo after photo. Sometimes I would stop and cry a little. Sometimes I felt like I was going to be sick. The original idea for this print came out of that. The same evening, actually. I ended up redrawing it after a while, and then played around with the colors for a while longer, but the original idea is exactly the same.

Katie didn't understand at first why I chose to scribble out the boy's face. I had looked at so many pictures of orphans. You can see the emotion in their faces. You can see despair. You can see hope. Sometimes you can see joy. But I think we tend to forget that when we are looking at something from the outside. Yes, we are still moved by the numbers. But each one of those children had a mother and a father. Each one has a soul. A personality. A face. So it came from that. And it also came from the reality that we can so easily turn our backs to tragedy and crisis. And I am certainly among the worst of those.