Once Upon...
A girl reflects upon the growth and loss of her childhood imagination...
As she becomes older the stories and pictures she creates in her mind change from magical fairy tales to more serious narratives related to growing up: relationships, jobs, and leaving home. At the end of the series, after seeing more of the world, she has begun to wish that she could return to her youth and start again.
This series greatly reflected my own struggles of entering adulthood while trying to retain the vivid imagination of my youth. As a child I would spend hours playing in my backyard tree house, inventing stories where I would visit far off lands and go on adventures with friends. Now my far off lands consist of Home Depot and Publix, buying more sustenance and supplies for the latest home renovation project. I struggle to find time to allow my mind to wander on an aimless path and creating these images was a meditative-like experience that forced me to pause my worries and think creatively. Upon seeing these works as a whole I realized that I still have the ability to create stories like I did on those endless summer afternoons but the worries I face now as an adult are so much different from the ones I knew of then. Sometimes I wish I could go back to when life was simpler and my biggest problem was having too much jelly on my PB&J sandwich.
Read MoreAs she becomes older the stories and pictures she creates in her mind change from magical fairy tales to more serious narratives related to growing up: relationships, jobs, and leaving home. At the end of the series, after seeing more of the world, she has begun to wish that she could return to her youth and start again.
This series greatly reflected my own struggles of entering adulthood while trying to retain the vivid imagination of my youth. As a child I would spend hours playing in my backyard tree house, inventing stories where I would visit far off lands and go on adventures with friends. Now my far off lands consist of Home Depot and Publix, buying more sustenance and supplies for the latest home renovation project. I struggle to find time to allow my mind to wander on an aimless path and creating these images was a meditative-like experience that forced me to pause my worries and think creatively. Upon seeing these works as a whole I realized that I still have the ability to create stories like I did on those endless summer afternoons but the worries I face now as an adult are so much different from the ones I knew of then. Sometimes I wish I could go back to when life was simpler and my biggest problem was having too much jelly on my PB&J sandwich.
...and it was as good a day as any to be a princess...
...year she watched them grow, and then they would fly away to...
...said he would be there, and so she waited...
...dreamed of going somewhere else, traveling to some place where...
...but maybe she could earn their approval by...
...the task gave her time to think and to plan for the day when...
...but she no longer believed that. It had been a long time since she had seen rain. She briefly considered going back despite...
...to see if the grass really was greener on the other side of the...
...up, the ground slipped away and she was able to farther than...
...but was it worth it in the end, she wondered...