November 26, 2007

My favorite family of God-loving artists were on NPR this week. You can hear the interview here or read a transcript below:

Family of Artists
A Grand Rapids, Mich. family create art in an unconventional lifestyle.

by Kaomi Goetz

Having one parent who works as an artist, or even both parents, may not be all that unusual, but what about the whole family? That's the case with the Beerhorst family of Grand Rapids,

where the entire brood is encouraged to make art and sell it. They even call their lives an experiment in living.

Rick and Brenda Beerhorst and their children are at the office.

Well, not the usual kind. They're working in clusters inside an old carriage garage behind their house.

And they're definitely not faxing or computing anything.

"Is this ready to go?" Rick Beerhorst peers at his daughter and a painting she's just finished.

The Beerhorsts are in one of their regular art-making sessions.

The kids grab whatever paintbrush or paint marker is available, a wooden board or paper scrap, and dip into whatever colors are on the table.

The end result seems less important than the actual making of the art.

Eight year-old Dove Beerhorst stands up for a minute to explain her piece.

"I'm using reds and blues," she trails off.

This family makes their living almost entirely on their collective art which they sell off the walls of their home.

Patriarch Rick Beerhorst is a well-respected painter whose work is influenced by American folk art.

His wife Brenda is also an experienced painter and collage artist.

Beerhorst says having the family make art together is a way to stay connected to their children.

"The way we grew up there was a disconnect, between the parents go here, the kids go there, the parents work really hard to get them into a real good school, and they go off to the good school and you see each other on Thanksgiving and Christmas, you know? And we thought could there be something that's more knit together than that?"

"My name is Brenda, I'm the mother and wife. I have six kids. We sort of all hang out together in the house, and the kids don't go to school, we encourage creativity."

The Beerhorst children, ages three to 15 years, are home-schooled, or as the Beerhorsts like to say "unschooled."

The children are taught to read by age eight, but aside from that, there isn't a set structure.

Rick says their curriculum is more about learning from life experiences.

"We don't use textbooks, we don't use any curriculum We think of learning as a continuum, the thought that you're going to school, doesn't even work for us because where does that stop and begin?"

The family uprooted several years ago to New York City for one of those life experiences.

The idea to was make art, take in a new culture, and learn from that for as long as they could afford.

Rick played music on the local coffeehouse circuit.

Their eldest daughter Rose started making soft toys out of old socks that were sold by several stores.

Brenda Beerhorst says their New York experiment lasted about a year.

"It was really harder than I thought to be away from everyone I knew. Another aspect we hadn't thought about, we had six kids, living in a two-bedroom apartment. And there was no yard for them to play in, and so we had to hike daily to the nearest playground with them."

Last year, the family returned to Grand Rapids and bought a house with a modest back yard on a busy street.

They liked its proximity to stores and a local farmer's market.

That was important, because the family doesn't own a car.

They also make do without health insurance. The Beerhorsts survive on what they make from their art shows and from the occasional gallery sale of one of Rick Beerhorst's paintings.

Sometimes anonymous envelopes of money show up on their doorstep from sympathetic friends.

They regularly dumpster dive for furniture, art materials, clothes and whatever else they can find.

It's a meager living and Brenda Beerhorst doesn't pretend that it's easy.

"People who don't know us, think wow, but they don't know the 3 am wonderings how we'll pay the mortgage in a week, or being invited to go out for lunch and knowing you had to scrape the change from your old winter coats to try and add to five bucks and buy something and not appear to be weird."

For 15-year old Rose Beerhorst, growing up like this was not always easy.

She remembers a time where she wished her family wasn't so different.

"All the guys in our church did golf, so I thought that was normal, an office job was normal, a buzz cut was normal, ladies who got manicures was normal, and our food was not normal. We didn't eat tuna soup casserole. Now that I look back on it, tuna soup casserole sounds pretty gross and so does golf. I think I'm pretty happy where I'm at right now."

Today, she says being different is actually a plus.

It gives her more confidence and she calls conventional teen-age milestones like Prom overrated.'

She says staying at home allows her to concentrate on her creative interests, like her sock monsters.

And she's learned valuable skills on how to sell merchandise to the public, something she might turn into a career.

Rick Beerhorst says it'll be OK if his kids decide to shun this lifestyle when they're adults.

But for now, they all seem content to make art, sell it to strangers, and enjoy each other's company.

The Beerhorsts' next family show will be December 7-9 in the evening at their home in Grand Rapids.