Learning to Live
Play is defined as a range of voluntary, intrinsically motivated activities that are normally associated with pleasure and enjoyment. As children, we don’t even think much about the act of playing, we just simply do it. It is immediate, wild, and often unpredictable; it is what makes play as a child so great. As we grow older, we begin to define play in our own minds so that it no longer becomes about the impulse but instead about the carefully planned down time or relaxation.
Where does play go? When does our play time become work time and how quickly can our play time vanish? I have become fascinated with the notion that as we grow older, we slowly take on the role of playtime and turn it into reality as our career. Slowly, playtime manifests itself in a new form and becomes something more than how we played so innocently as children. Which is not to say that we all can become batman one day, but maybe we become police officers, fire fighters, and soldiers? Maybe that happens because we secretly want to be heros? As a soldier myself, I can tell you that I never knew where joining the army would take me. I joined following my first real art series in high school for my senior concentration piece for my AP exam. My work was centered on whether I should join the Army or become a teacher. At the end I decided I wanted to do both. Since then my life has been like a pendulum, swinging from the army life to the teacher life. Training to be an Officer by morning and studying to be a teacher by day. Now, as I come to the waning moments of my senior year, it is finally time for this pendulum to stop so I can now merge the two lifestyles into one. My education in both fields has helped me become the man and artist that I am today. As a teacher I am always looking to learn more and as an officer I am always looking to be more. That is the outlook I have for my work and for my future students.
In my piece, I explore the idea of the sandbox and how simple play with toy soldiers can ultimately go from being a fun game that we play as children with our imaginations to becoming the chosen career of so many people. This piece was inspired mainly from the death of a fellow solider in my unit. The sandboxes are made of pinewood and are 6 feet by 4 feet and approximately 5 ½ inches tall. They are filled with high desert sand and small plastic green army men that we have all played with at one time or another. The boxes are surrounded by dirt and laid out to look like plots in a burial. I hope you can no longer look at play the same way as you did before.
