Abstract | Artist Statement | Image Gallery | Home | Close Portfolio (and return to SMP index) Abstract
|
I began my St. Marys Project with an interest in toys and the messages they can convey. I thought about the connection between toys and childrens development and believe game playing is a major way we humans engage in and learn about life. A child's play is often a way they train for adulthood. Issues of gender development are what began to interest me most. Gender identity is very much shaped by the games and toys that children play with. When children play with toys like tea sets and easy-bake ovens they model themselves in domestic roles at an early age. Boys playing with airplanes and fire engines imagine being heroes and being tough, strong men. I believe that childrens toys reinforce, if not create, much of the gender stereotypes that exist in our culture. Gender is not only about a persons sexual identity; it is at the root of all natural and learned behaviors, social roles, and cultural assumptions. Play is actually a big part of our culture and our adulthood even after those stuffed animals and toy trains have been put away in boxes in the attic. Our culture accepts and encourages the way toys shape the gender of their children. Teaching young girls how to be like Martha Stewart and boys how to be firemen is the norm in our society. Teaching boys how to be boys and girls how to be girls is a very divided lesson that is shaped by game playing in our society. Gender difference is first learned through childhood play and then acted out in later years. I explore these issues of gender and childhood in my work by re-contextualizing and transforming the very toys that shape us so.
|
Abstract | Artist Statement | Image Gallery | Home | Close Portfolio (and return to SMP index) |