Who in Their Right Mind...?
This body of work challenges people to continue fostering the same creativity, imagination, playfulness, search for knowing, fearlessness and ambition as we all had growing up as kids. There is meme I saw once that says we need to have the same fearlessness as a 5 year old kid wearing a Batman t-shirt, or something to that effect.
When we "grow up" to be adults and take on responsibilities, have careers, build families, etc... we tend to lose sight of those small, yet vital, traits that helped us grow and learn as children.
I think back when I was young hanging around my brother and cousins. I'm proud in the fact that we had adventures...I mean wandering in the woods on our bikes riding around in the country of East Texas where my family is from. We always pretended to be a character out of any cartoon group of four main characters like the Ghostbusters or the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (I was Peter and Leonardo). We did things like create skits and built stuff with taken apart electronics, and don't get us started on the forts and clubhouses. The world was ours with a big furniture box or a comforter connecting two adjacent twin beds.
These things, I am so grateful for now. That creativity, imagination, and humor created me, and in my opinion, allows me still to live a rather happy life and keep me balanced. Often times when we grow old, especially within black culture, a lot of the "childlike" things are labeled as weak or weird. People fail to realize the foundations behind it all. Amid the stresses of our jobs and family drama, how do we stay sane?
This body of work also focuses on cultural representation within the toys and cartoons we grew up with. I've said it many a time before. One of the most important things that we can do for our children is to have them exposed to the mirror where they can see people that look like them in the stories and toys that influence so much. That's why we have so many religions, but don't get me started on that topic. Now I'm an 80s baby, so even though that representation was far less for us, it was nonetheless there. Watching my children grow and develop put a magnifying glass on this issue to ensure that they constantly had connection with loving their blackness.
Our creativity generates from the right side of the brain. So, who in their right mind...?
