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).

"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.

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.