For Edith Bingham art was an important part of her childhood,
but as an adult she’s realized there’s such a thing as an art to
raising children.
Hollister – For Edith Bingham art was an important part of her childhood, but as an adult she’s realized there’s such a thing as an art to raising children.
She first learned to paint with oil from her Aunt Catherine, also an artist, at nine years old. After high school, she attended Boston Museum School and has supported herself as a commercial artist.
Recently, she’s busied her days refurbishing her Hollister home – one of the oldest in the city. The home was what drew Edith and her family to Hollister when they began looking for affordable housing. It was New Year’s Eve in 1999 and, on a whim, Edith and her husband Philip drove to Hollister and just happened to spot a house they liked on the market.
“We move to Monterey, we thought just for two years while my husband Philip worked on a master’s degree,” she said, but they never did.
They felt like Hollister was home.
Now, with the bigger house projects behind them, the older seven kids on their own, and their nine-year old son Owen in school, one would think that Edith would once again be working full time on her artistic endeavors.
And, in a sense, she is. The canvas is mischievous-eye, curly-haired, two-and-a-half-foot tall pixie often seen tugging at her skirt.
She is the three-year old, Azeri girl named Leyla the Bingham family adopted at the end of their stay in Azerbaijan a year ago.
The family moved to the country of about 8 million people on the shore of the Caspian Sea for a year because Philip wanted some time outside of United States. He had found a job training English teachers, and though their first choice had been a village in Eastern Europe, they chose Baku – the capital city of Azerbaijan.
“We had heard it was safe, and the bigger city would be less isolated. Plus, I had always been interested in living in an Islamic country,” Bingham said. Her desire to experience another culture was first kindled during Edith’s late teen years, when she hitchhiked alone from a kibbutz via Istanbul to New Delhi.
While in Azerbaijan, she spent time learning local rug-weaving techniques from a young ethnographer, and cuddling babies and teaching art to older kids in the local orphanages.
As Edith grew to love these children, she and Philip decided that although financially it would be a stretch, they would adopt one.
“I fell in love with some of the kids I worked with… but we had to go through channels and take who was available,” Edith said.
And that turned out to be Leyla.
As Leyla blossoms after the deprivation of the orphanage, Edith returns to the traditions of American culture, folklore and art. Her next project will be a rug reflecting American folk motifs with the techniques she learned in Azerbaijan. And even though she will always have that two-year-old reminder of the country, she still remembers a simpler life in a foreign land.
“I miss the produce! On every street corner, people are selling stuff they’ve grown, cause there’s no regulations… a beautiful loaf of bread costs 10 cents…even poor people make their houses from stone, with hardwood floors. You could get anywhere on public transportation.”
Local Stories focuses on the people who love living and working in San Benito County. Subjects are chosen at random by the Free Lance staff and published every Wednesday.
