Lost Childhood Object

 

I had fun recreating this scrappy, wind chime-like object. Simple, joyful, small child kind of fun. I felt no pressure to have clean knots, equally distanced strings, or perfectly alternating scraps of metal and glass. Instead, I put myself in the mindset of a child. Who cares if one string is longer than another? Not the child. Does it matter if there is only one piece of glass on this string and none on the next? No, it doesn't matter. In fact, this care free style of creating is the spirit of the object. 

As I recreated this childhood object, I found myself uncomfortable with constructing this in such a messy way. But when I imagined myself as the object's original artist, I realized messy and uneven and non-color coordinated was exactly what I was supposed to be. I felt silly (in a good way) sitting on the ground, holding down one knot with a heel while tying a second with my two hands. I put the same kind of thought into choosing my next object to attach as a child would - a careful, attentive, intuitive thought. And when I finished making the object, I felt proud of my scrappy little wind chime. 

I also really enjoyed honoring my classmate's childhood with the object. I felt like I was recreating a little sacred object, full of memory and experience and emotion. It's interesting to consider how other small objects I encounter might hold the same kind of memory and emotion for others.