3rd year semester one (little shits and giggles)

 

At the beginning of this year I was given the task of deciding on a topic that I could base my project on. After numerous brainstorms and many ideas, I decided on “humorous childhood memories”. I chose this topic as I wanted my project to be fun and light hearted, as well as being something I would really enjoy doing.

 I started by reminiscing my childhood memories with my sisters and my mum, writing down descriptions of each memory, collecting old baby photographs and drawing pictures and elements of those memories.

 

 

Just a few of the memories that i loved the best;

 



When Kayleigh was 3 years old we wrapped her hair in a towel and showed her in the mirror,

She screamed with laughter for ages.

 

Kayleigh always tried to walk around the house with a bucket on her head, a baby pink bucket! Very in back then!!

 We always used to dress up what kid didn’t!

We dressed up Emma one day, as a pregnant women, with big boobs!

She was 6 years old.

My first day of 1^st class I didn’t want to leave my baby sister at home, so I obviously put her in my school bag to bring her with me. But I got caught! Damn!

 My sisters and I loved doing handstands on the couch, Emma is so talented she didn’t need to use her hands, she just used her head!!

 We used to fall asleep anywhere and everywhere Shar once passed out in front of the fire with a huge dodo in her mouth and was wearing big dirty socks on her feet!!

 My sister fell off the swing one time and broke her two front teeth!

Till this day every Christmas we sing “all I want for Christmas is my two front teeth”

 Kayleigh fell asleep one day sitting up! i think it was because she had only recently learned how to sit up! The novelty would soon wear off, walking would be next!

Instead of building bricks, we used to build houses with briquettes, like a boss!!!

We were on a day out to a fancy garden. We were getting a lovely family picture taken, at the last minute my uncle grabbed my little sister and hung her over the side of the bridge it was so funny!

We went on a ghost train with dad one summer, Bad Idea!We all came out crying hysterically! Scared shitless we were! Mam just pissed herself laughing!! Nice!!

Anytime we ate jelly and ice cream, all of it ended up all over our faces!

Shar fell asleep with her favourite furry blue blanket. Kayleigh felt tired to, so decided she wanted to sleep on shar’s face!!

Shar and I convinced Emma one day that a huge puddle of dirty water was “holy water”

And she drank it! We were so mean!

 I got stuck in a tree one day. My little sister who could barely talk at the time had to go get mam “tree mammy tree ceena tree”Awh sisterly love!!

Kayleigh loved to sit on the hoover while mam used it!! She loved the fan on it blowing wind through her hair! She found it fascinating!

Every summer since we were young we always have played on hay bales! One of the simple joys of living in the country side!

Kayleigh when she was one, knocked a huge 6foot Christmas tree over we spent the whole of Christmas Eve looking for another tree!The strength of a one year old! Amazing!

We used to get towed around by a quad in a huge red sandpit! No Barbie’s for us girls!

In Spain, my sisters and I floated too far out to sea on a blow up bed! I had to get off the bed and paddle us all back in. I saved my sisters, they only had minor injuries! A sting of a jellyfish!

Sitting on the front wall! Watching a motorbike go up and down the road! It does a wheelie in front of us then Poof! Emma is gone! She fell backwards off the wall!

When it rains, we played the raindrop race game! We would pick a raindrop each and see which one hit the end of the window first!

In Spain we all dug a huge hole in the sand and buried ourselves neck deep in it. We also used to put armbands on our feet! Weird!!

I bit my cousin on the cheek for no reason as a baby my granddad gave out to me! My cousin still has a mark on his cheek oopppss! My bad!

When my sisters and I shared a room, we had 3 beds fairly close together, we used to try jump to each bed, most of the time we didn’t make it! Talking about it makes my head hurt still!

Back in the day, comfort had to be mixed with water! Mam had done this in a milk bottle, left it on the bench and when dinner came round, she had mashed up my potatoes, a little bit of butter lots of milk and a pinch of salt yummy!! Or so you might think I wouldn’t eat them and I loved my potatoes! Mam made me eat them up until she realised what she had done! She tried to poison me! She was the one who nearly died she could not believe she used comfort instead of milk!!





Ok maybe alot of childhood memories there but.... oh well!!

 

From these descriptions and photos, I thought up of a lot of different ideas. I wanted to make a handmade memory book with text and illustrations. But I found this very difficult to enjoy which showed in the making of the book. I wasn’t interested in this idea as I got more into the making of it. I would really like to come back to this idea in the next semester and push it forward, so I can make it enjoyable and interesting for myself.

 

Some ideas and sketches;

 

my wood block prints with a touch of experimentation!

 

 

My handmade, hand binding book fail!!

 

 

 

During this semester, we also had an edition project to complete, I chose to do a silkscreen of my sisters and I doing handstands on the couch because this is one of my childhood memories that is still very vivid in my mind and it’s also a very light hearted, playful image which is why I chose to do it for my edition using the silkscreen process.

 

 

3 colours.

 

finished 5 colour edition print.

 

My main idea now which I’m having such a great time doing is the toy box timeline. I started with drawing out three toy boxes a baby toy box, a teenage toy box and an adult toy box. From these drawings I am in the middle of creating silkscreens of these toy boxes, I have the teenage toy box done and I will finish the other two toy boxes next semester. Using these drawings and silkscreens as inspiration I made 3d wooden toy boxes and painted them differently to portray the different  time periods in my life and I also filled them with items from the different periods of my life baby, teenager, adult that I am now!

 drawing (baby toybox)

 Slikscreen (teenage/gothic years)

 drawing (adult toybox)

 (black and white slikscreen)

                                                                           (5 colour slikscreen)

I then decided to push my silkscreens even further and make the toyboxes into 3d sculptures. this is a bit of the process of making the toyboxes......

 

 finished toybox sculptures...