Type of Document	Master's Thesis
Author	Burns, Danielle
Author's Email Address	danielle.elizabeth.burns@gmail.com
URN	etd-06062012-225125
Title	Up Like Weeds
Degree	Master of Fine Arts (M.F.A.)
Department	Art
Advisory Committee	Advisor Name Title Koptcho, Leslie Committee Chair Arp, Kimberly Committee Member Baggett, Lynne Committee Member Scott Kelley, Kelli Committee Member Shaw, Andy Committee Member
Keywords	disavowal storytelling rural memory printmaking reductive woodcut intaglio silkscreen childhood innocence
Date of Defense	2009-05-08
Availability	unrestricted
Abstract A child playing with matches is forgivable. Kids are curious. They want to explore adult activities through play. Does it stay innocent when that child experiments with the effects of firecrackers in frogs and gasoline on animals? What happens when they light the match? The grey area between childhood innocence and realization of wrong intrigues me and I find it fascinating how adult perspectives of such malicious deeds often vary. Up Like Weeds questions these responses using a collection of narrative prints and freestanding woodcut figures. They visually tell five tales of children in a rural environment acting out in deviant and mischievous ways not normally associated with youthful innocence. The characters developed from a particular group of children who are based on delinquents I knew, which is why I chose the rural landscape for the settings of my narratives. I speak through this landscape more naturally. The children in this exhibition should not be seen as victimized innocents for whom to place blame, but as vehicles to question this strange time and transition in everyone’s childhood and reflect on an adult tendency to alter their perspectives of these times later in life. They speak directly to and confront the viewer’s childhood memories that have since been rationalized and sugarcoated into child “norms” that project innocence onto play where it never really existed. The characters in Up Like Weeds should not be seen as future socio-paths or miscreants, but as exaggerated personifications of our once-selves. The confrontational images call the viewer to question an adult tendency to discard certain memories in an attempt to rationalize our actions as children into innocent play. It is virtue by omission. The stories reveal the necessary, but complicated way most of us search for adulthood. This was my experience and what my prints are based on: the messy, secretive and shameful truths that make up our childhoods.
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