Virginia Taylor
Hundred Acre Woods
Mixed Media
Hundred Acre Woods
Mixed Media
I remember being 6 years old and planting sunflowers by the garage with my sister Meg. I would pad around in my striped sundress and bare feet, and when the sunflowers ended up growing higher than the garage roof, Meg and I were overjoyed, rushing outside every morning to see just how much taller they’d grown. When the air started to get cooler, and the sunflowers began to come down one by one, Meg and I would happily collect the seeds from the centers and play with them in any way we could. They were confetti, they were decorations for the fairy houses we built in our backyard, they were our art.
There was something about that 6 year old Virginia, that girl that didn’t wear shoes, that girl who built dollhouses out of girl scout cookie boxes and sled down her pine needle covered hill on a piece of cardboard and called out to Christopher Robin from Winnie the Pooh every time she explored the woods behind her house, hoping he’d come out and together they’d explore the hundred acre woods, that I admire. 6-year-old Virginia would never have let anyone tell her there was something she couldn’t do. She was confident, she was creative, she loved as much as she was loved. As silly as it sounds, I’d really like to meet her.
That innocence is gone now. In a cliché sense of things, “times change, people change” and I sometimes wonder if there’s any going back to that barefoot, freckle faced Virginia. I hope there are parts of her that are still a part of me, but sometimes I feel unsure. See, I spend more time enveloped in my dark covers than outside in the fresh air, I have a constant lump in my throat which I’m unsure is from sadness or simply from the piles of pills I take each morning, and I’ve discovered Christopher Robin isn’t real, which is a horrible realization to make. The scariest thing about this is, I don’t even remember when I became this person.
In Hundred Acre Woods I hope to pay tribute to that brave little girl that once was. The seeds and beans show her ability to see the beauty in something so plain, so simple, and to use it in her own way. There are also sunflower seeds as well, but unfortunately, I don’t think these will grow taller than a garage. However, if the seeds do ever sprout, the sculpture will become something different entirely, represented by the vine slowly winding its way up the figure. Maybe that change will be beautiful, and maybe my change can be beautiful too. In a way, though I feel as if I’ve lost a part of myself, and I desire to get her back, maybe she’s not as far away as I think she is, and maybe she is more a part of my life than I realize. Maybe the old and the new can come together to create something more beautiful than before.
There was something about that 6 year old Virginia, that girl that didn’t wear shoes, that girl who built dollhouses out of girl scout cookie boxes and sled down her pine needle covered hill on a piece of cardboard and called out to Christopher Robin from Winnie the Pooh every time she explored the woods behind her house, hoping he’d come out and together they’d explore the hundred acre woods, that I admire. 6-year-old Virginia would never have let anyone tell her there was something she couldn’t do. She was confident, she was creative, she loved as much as she was loved. As silly as it sounds, I’d really like to meet her.
That innocence is gone now. In a cliché sense of things, “times change, people change” and I sometimes wonder if there’s any going back to that barefoot, freckle faced Virginia. I hope there are parts of her that are still a part of me, but sometimes I feel unsure. See, I spend more time enveloped in my dark covers than outside in the fresh air, I have a constant lump in my throat which I’m unsure is from sadness or simply from the piles of pills I take each morning, and I’ve discovered Christopher Robin isn’t real, which is a horrible realization to make. The scariest thing about this is, I don’t even remember when I became this person.
In Hundred Acre Woods I hope to pay tribute to that brave little girl that once was. The seeds and beans show her ability to see the beauty in something so plain, so simple, and to use it in her own way. There are also sunflower seeds as well, but unfortunately, I don’t think these will grow taller than a garage. However, if the seeds do ever sprout, the sculpture will become something different entirely, represented by the vine slowly winding its way up the figure. Maybe that change will be beautiful, and maybe my change can be beautiful too. In a way, though I feel as if I’ve lost a part of myself, and I desire to get her back, maybe she’s not as far away as I think she is, and maybe she is more a part of my life than I realize. Maybe the old and the new can come together to create something more beautiful than before.