I met this young lady at an art workshop. When everyone was waiting for the workshop to start, there was a little voice from my back “Hey sis, do you want to draw on your shoebox? I have many pencils”. I turned around. I saw a young lady sitting in a corner, hand-holding a pencil drawing on a black shoebox. She didn’t even look at me, she was busy drawing. I mumbled “ mmm yeah…”. I had no idea what to draw anyway, I thought I would just draw some lines on my shoebox.
So, I sat down next to her and picked up a blue pencil. As she leaned toward me to check out what I was about to draw, I was a little bit freaked out. I quickly drew a few lines and some dots on my shoebox. She then got back to her shoebox “Alright, I will draw a flower”. I smiled “Ohh… okay… why didn’t I think about flowers”. She then started giving instructions while she drew on her shoebox “draw a flower here… like this… then you color it like this…”. I sat there, observing her being in her own drawing world. I sometimes responded to her instruction “mmm okay”. The interaction between this young lady and I went on like this for almost 5 minutes until the workshop started.
Her name is Mật Ong, which means Honey. She is about 7 years old. She has big black eyes and they are hiding behind her hair bangs. Apparently, she is a quiet lady. But once you are close enough to her, she will actively share with you stories about the dogs and cats living in her dad’s backyard. She also loves climbing. She took to me her secret place near the studio. It’s a scrapyard where she practices climbing every weekend.
It was a beautiful time spent with this young lady. She surprised me with her ways of thinking about the surroundings.