why this project?

I didn't want to step into something so vast and sad, not for the project that supposedly launches me into the world as an illustrator/designer. I wanted to do something light and fun. Music, fashion, colour, anything but abuse.

But here it is, my fyp about the cycle of abuse.

The true reason I'm doing it is I dreamt of them again: the children. I went to the Home to visit, and T and M came and sat on the bed beside me and talked to me. I put my arms around them both and said, "You must learn to love each other." 

That's it then. I listen to my dreams. They tell me what is important to me, what lasts after music and fashion and colour. 

"You must learn to love each other" sounds so mundane. But it is a big lesson for these children, who grow up learning that they must fight and be alert to keep what is their own. 

I can't protect them from circumstances now, not by volunteering at a camp once a year. But I can help to break the cycle by teaching them that love can be safe. That they don't have to grow into their adult bodies with the same tense hearts of hardened children. 

What I can't wrap my mind around is the lens of this project. There's a campaign, a company identity, print media, new media, and installation. I flung myself at Installation because it was the only one that seemed airy and large enough to contain everything I want to say. But maybe not. 

String: an exercise

Explorations with that roll of white string. I don’t like cute chubby stiff string, I like thin scrawls of membrane that look alive and floating. Shot on a light table in the workshop.

How will this relate to my fyp? String is such a basic metaphor that almost any story can be told about knots (the default troublemakers in any situation). It’s not easy to be original with a ball of string. I may or may not use the knot metaphor because of that.

But if I did, this is my string story: if you don’t unravel the knots as they form, they’ll remain unpicked as other knots form. Again, could be said about any other issue in the world.

I much prefer to look at the nervous quality of the string, how alive and how floating it looks cuddled up as a nest, and how similar it is to my own scrawled handwriting.

Helping with Jane Lee and Paolo for the biennale, which should teach me a thing or twenty about installations and the working process. It’s worth skipping class for, and my meetings with them will be up on this blog too.