"You are old, Father William," the young man said, 

"And your hair has become very white; 

And yet you incessantly stand on your head –  

Do you think, at your age, it is right?" 

 

"In my youth," Father William replied to his son, 

"I feared it might injure the brain; 

But, now that I'm perfectly sure I have none, 

Why, I do it again and again." i  

 

Lewis Carroll 

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland 

 

As adults, we tend to look back on childhood with nostalgia, as a time of carefree innocence. As children we look ahead to being “grown-up,” to being commanders of our own fates, no longer subject to the authority of our elders. Whether adult or child, it’s a case of the cliché, the grass is always greener on the other side.  

 

What if we partake of both sides? 

 

Child’s Play attempts understand the psychology of childhood; from the social dynamics of the playground, viewed as a microcosm for our adult lives, to revisiting childhood and the byproducts of our youthful imaginations.  

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Like the son, we hold preconceived notions of what it is to be an adult, but like old Father William, we can realize the importance of remaining young at heart. 

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“The Queen turned crimson with fury, and, after glaring at ... her for a moment like a wild beast, began screaming ‘Off with her head! Off with – ‘ 
 
‘Nonsense!’ said Alice, very loudly and decidedly, and the Queen was silent.” ii

 

The works of Kristina Bilonick, Scott G. Brooks, Alexandria Levin, Sharon Trumbull and Yoram Wolberger all delve into the psychology of childhood, and childish things. 

 

The architectural nature of Kristina Bilonick’s block installation literally builds with images from her own memory, a visual record of the influences in her childhood that had a profound effect on the “foundation” of her character. 

 

With a dark humor, Scott G. Brooks uses distortion in his works to create his own disturbing reality.  Brooks’ figurative narratives presented in Child’s Play explore social and psychological issues, with children as the central subject. 

 

For Jenny Kanzler, the playground serves as a metaphor for the darker aspects of the human experience. Through images of fear and humor, Kanzler depicts the most basic aspect of life- survival of the fittest.  

 

Toys are loved fiercely by their children, often to the point of destruction, and usually are abandoned. The poignant representations of plush toys by Alexandria Levin present a moment of stillness, the beloved toy in the absence of the child. Eerie and endearing all at once, they provide a narrative open for the imagination. 

 

There is magic in the way light plays over form. Sharon Trumbull first realized that magic as a child, studying its play over the forms of her toys. Trumbull’s toy still lives explore the psychological effects of light. The toys in the compositions are personifications of human interrelationships and social rituals, with light that reveals while it conceals, presenting the viewer with an enigmatic scene. 

 

A push of a button releases a cacophony of sound in Yoram Wolberger’s installation. The sight of the musical stuffed toys, turned inside out, disemboweled, is disturbing, humorous, and precocious all at once. The senses are overwhelmed but if one listens closely, the individual songs can be heard.  

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“Alice laughed. ‘There’s no use trying,’ she said, ‘one can’t believe impossible things.’ 
 

‘I daresay you haven’t had much practice,’ said the Queen. ‘When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why sometimes I believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast!’ iii 

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The works of Jaime Cabrera, Robert Stuart Cohen, Erin Fostel, Grendel’s Mother (David Friedheim and Trisha Kyner) and Megan Marlatt resonate a quality of youthful imagination. 

 

In Jaime Cabrera’s surrealist paintings, the viewer sees the world through the perceptions of a child. In his compositions, a balance is struck between what is imagined, what is real, and a blurring of the boundaries between the two. 

 

Robert Stuart Cohen’s works are concerned with the formal qualities, the primary building blocks of visual art. In these pieces from his tromp l’oeil series, Cohen portray crayons, cut paper, string, and other creative materials of childhood. There is a dual nature to these paintings. They present a tension; in the artist’s own words, “a tension between confinement and freedom,” iv and yet the overall compositions hold a sense of whimsy. 

 

The charcoal and graphite self-portraits of Erin Fostel are about the power of pure imagination. Fostel’s works convey the rediscovery of lost childhood perception and imagination in early maturity- and the importance of retaining it.  

 

Grendel’s Mother (David Friedheim and Trisha Kyner) produce three-dimensional works on a large scale (large enough to be sat on while being pushed or pulled by others) that convey a “spirit of expansive play.” v They mingle art historical sources, and cultural artifacts, illustrating how memories from childhood can come to merge with adult desires.  

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Megan Marlatt explores what is actual and what is pretend; real versus unreal, static versus dynamic, through portraits and landscapes of children’s toys. Through their portraits, the toys take on a personality that they would be denied as a still-life. As landscapes they serve as terrain for the imagination, serving as actors and scenery in a world of their own. 

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Notations:

i Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Chapter V: Advice from a Caterpillar, 1865. 

ii Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Chapter VIII: The Queen’s Croquet Ground, 1865. 

iii Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass, Chapter V: Wool and Water, 1871. 

iv Robert Stuart Cohen, studio visit with the artist, 2010. 

v Grendel’s Mother, Artist Statement, 2010. 

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