Split Ends
Polina V.
Cardboard sheets, Watercolor paper, Watercolor, colored pencil, collage paper, string.
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As I grow, I leave behind the childhood that I have created, the nostalgia living only in my memories. My mother clings to this past version of me as she fears that I am growing up too fast. While I construct and build bits and pieces of myself to find out who I am, parts of me want to return to my childhood, to the safety and reliability of my parents. However, I must keep moving forward to the future, even if that means splitting from the comfort that I am used to. Through my piece, I wanted to convey the continuously conflicting emotions of the comfort of relying on parents and the need for independence. Especially with the connection of a mother-daughter relationship, I wished to illustrate how personal the growth and separation are my mom and I. My process when creating this piece was to depict the passage of time through multiple cardboard layers depicting different points of my life. On the first layer, I illustrated a crib and a mobile to indicate my childhood. From this layer, my mother is pulling my arm, pulling me back to this time where she could care for me as a baby. For the following layers, scenes of growth are shown, from a child's high chair at the dinner table to childlike drawings stuck to the fridge. My present self is moving forward from this past, however, split by the desire to return while also determined to move into the future.
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Creativity is a way for me to convey my emotions and express who I am. Creating art allows me to spread important messages that can have significant impacts on others. By expressing myself creatively I can develop who I am as a person and share my story.