alexa kitchen> bio> a mother's insight

Alexa Shelby Kitchen was born in the summer of 1997 to Stacey and Denis Kitchen.

She began holding notebooks and markers, chewing on the edges, long before she could walk or understand what each of their potentials held.

Her first recognizable image, at the age of two, was of a lady bug. Unfortunately, the magna-doodle it was etched on wasn't easy to tape onto the refrigerator. We decided a ream of white paper might be a better investment.
She took to pen and ink like a duckling to water. She loved the feeling of power she had to create - as all children do. However, while most other toddlers use crayons to color in someone else's lines, Alexa never did. She favored a fine point pen and the blank side of a restaurant's menu, napkin, paper towel roll, or anything else that was a bare canvas she could draw on.

While most children draw static "pictures," Alexa wanted to tell stories with her images. Though her earliest scribbles were crude, they did show signs of being very perceptive for one so young. She found a way to breath life and emotion into her simple line characters. Everything had a purpose.

As most parents do, we thought it was pretty adorable, but didn't really take her efforts that seriously.

Even as a toddler, Alexa LOVED books -- especially comic books. She loved being read to. She studied the pages and asked questions about the words AND about the images. At age four, pretty much all on her own, she learned to read. We noticed this quite by accident while reading bedtime books to her. If we missed a word (our 'short' version trying to get her into bed early) she would correct us.

By age 4 1/2 she could incorporate simple words with her images. Alexa's stories over the next few months developed into something you could actually follow and read. Her long-time imaginary friend "Kirsy" began starring in comic-book-type adventures, inspired by her love for other strong female characters: Olivia, Little Lulu, Eloise, and Bushmiller's Nancy.

Between the ages of four and five Alexa developed her OWN literary and imaginary world: Kirsy Lirsy Land (KLL) - a place where ANYTHING can happen - and did.

Roughly at around the time Alexa turned five, Denis and I noticed a change in her work.

While the art was still completely unrefined and absolutely still childish, it did surprise us in that it showed signs of some older sophistication. Her roads would get smaller as they wound around in the distance. Books and other square objects were no longer drawn flat. Instead, they were all cubed and had dimension. Rooms had intricate spatial layouts. Objects in the foreground were bigger than the objects drawn behind them. Fingers and hands actually bent around the objects they were holding. Here character's faces, especially the eyes, revealed and expressed true emotion. Alexa was creating images on art principles that she had not yet been taught. She just instinctively knew how to do it. And she did so in one well thought out draft --- in pen --- with no preliminary pencil guides.

Now that Alexa was reading, her bedroom slowly evolved into a small reference library. Books, comics, magazines, dictionaries, and encyclopedias began filling every available surface space. She became a voracious reader on a wide variety of subjects: ancient cultures, history, humor, fashion, and so on. She was a baby sponge soaking up big spills of information.

By age 5 1/2 her vocabulary had swelled so much that she rarely asked us to spell words. If they were complicated, she'd just spell them her own way: phonetically. Sometimes the originality of the subjects she addressed made us scratch our heads: "The History of Scissors" and "The Weird Hotel Workers." (???!!!) In addition, she even created her own language for KLL (Kirsy Lirsy Land) for which she designed several dictionaries for us to use for translation!

All of this was without ANY input from me or Denis. In fact, she ardently resists suggestion. We have just passively enjoyed watching her passion unfold.

Around this age she also showed her innate marketing side - drawing ISBN numbers and bar codes on the backs of her stories that featured fictitious "other books in the series" ads. She was, at the age of five, already trying to market her wares to would-be buyers: "Buy these books for YOUR kids! They'll have GREAT fun!"

Not only was she interested in creating for the sake of the artist in her, she (understandably) also wanted to be compensated for it. She tried to "sell" us daily newspapers for a quarter. She did this the hard way: she designed and drew a single page "newspaper" with made up stories and images. Then she drew the same thing on another piece of paper over and over until she had a small stack, apparently, unaware of our Xerox machine.

Again, we were pretty amused and impressed by her efforts, but didn't take them seriously.

Then our friends saw them. At first, we thought they were all just being "nice" by saying how neat her stories were. But, they all strangely seemed to agree that Alexa too good for her age -- that she was the dreaded overly-used smug parent word -- "gifted." (Sigh.)

Denis and I think she's pretty special, but only because she's ours (like all other parents). Her "art" is just her way of dealing with the reality of her life - just like other children. She draws what she sees and how she feels about it. (The intense anxiety in her Going to the Doctor story still makes me smile.) Like most children, drawing is cathartic for her. She just happens to be especially good at it.

Our friends and family have kept urging us to "do something" with her stories, rather than just keep them in a folder for when she grows up. That's why I decided to scan a tiny portion of her prolific output and upload them online. It's cheaper than Xeroxing them and mailing them to everyone.

Our small fortune in white paper and pens could have easily funded a small country over the last few years. But the investment has paid off in moments of sheer laughter, joy, reverence, and wonder of the world as seen through the art of an innocent child.

This is her passion and joy.

We hope that you enjoy peeking at her stuff as much as she enjoys creating it. This is her world . . . welcome to Alexa's Place.

~ Stacey Kitchen