Quote

“Children are like wet cement. Whatever falls on them makes an impression.”

- Dr. Haim Ginott 

Degree Show

It's taken a while but I'm finally posting my final pieces for the degree show.

This series of 5 drawings focuses on the eyes of children, emphasizing how children watch and absorb everything around them.

“Don't worry that children never listen to you; worry that they are always watching you.”

-Robert Fulghum

Here is one of the two book sculptures that I created. This piece looks at natural disasters, particularly tsunami and other water related dangers. The book is A. A. Milne's "Now We Are Six", a collection of childrens poems. The sculpture includes characters from the Winnie-the-Pooh books and Kenneth Grahamme's The Wind in the Willows. I have used my manipulated pages to act as barriers and windows, allowing for depth and shadows. As you look through them you see one of my drawings at the back, of a child's eye peering out.

The blood red base contrasts with the vibrant yellow of the book mirroring the contrast between the difficult adult world and the playful child world.

John Habberton's "Some Boys' Doings" is the book used here. This piece looks at how children can get caught up in situations that they know are wrong, but do not necessarily understand why. It reminds me of the film "This is England", written and directed by Shane Meadows, where a boy, bullied at school, finds sympathy and acceptance in a group of skinheads. However, he gets caught up in his role model's racist subgroup and sees things a young boy should not see.

In my piece, the boy inside the book is looking over his shoulder, his body language suggests he is aware of something bad. From the right, children run to warn or save him and his friend. From the right, police are on their way to either save them, or punish them.

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Website dedicated to the 2011 Graduates of BA(hons) in Drawing and Applied Arts at the University of the West of England (UWE).

Over Protecting Children... Just Let Them Learn.

This TED video is great. These things are brilliant for learning. It not only allows children to experience things that could be dangerous, but it also allows them to trust their parents, and to respect them. And it's so much fun!

By sheltering children, and not allowing them to experience situations, they cannot learn how to deal with them.

Gever Tulley
http://www.tinkeringschool.com/

"A grownup is a child with layers on”

I have used my manipulated book pages to create layered work, in a similar way to the pieces I produced for my assessment in January (See related post here). Just like that work, these layered pieces are talking about children looking out through a cross over of the childhood and adult worlds.


The book pages used are from many old children's books, including classics such as A. A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh collections and Kenneth Grahamme's The Wind in the Willows.


The pages have been treated with different mediums such as varnish, shoe polish, gesso, watercolour, and marbling inks.

Standing Alone

 

Enhancing the idea of fragility in my work, the pages and cutouts are going to be free standing. The pages will be strengthened by a thin frame of balsa wood, which I bought from a model shop in Bristol.

The cutouts from the book pages should be small enough not to need the balsa wood. Many of the cutouts are of children, and allowing these the freedom to stand alone is quite scary. Parents become extremely worried about what could happen to their children if they allow them more freedom. For adults, it is working out how much freedom a child should have, while at the same time shielding them from things too "grown up" for them, allowing them to keep their childhood innocence for a bit longer.

Traces

Removing the child from the page.
It suggests emptiness and loss.
Simply a trace of what should be there. An innocent childhood is becoming, to an extent, distant.

Using Covers

Involving the book covers in my work as frames. A protective blanket around the eyes and minds of children. This will reflect the protective nature of parents over their children.

Experimenting with Layers

Experimenting with the depth of layers and cut areas.

Childhood - Halfway Point.

Childhood juxtaposed with adulthood.

Care free, innocence alongside awareness and responsibilty.

Childhood

For my final year at Drawing and Applied Arts I have been looking at the theme of childhood. How free most childrens' lives are and the awkwardness they can cause.

Awkward comments and actions. And also the awkwardness of growing up. The rights of passage we go through, making us more aware and understanding, while bringing more questions to the horizon.