How my commission for the New Children’s Museum was almost a decade in the making
The New Children’s Museum first approached me in 2012 about creating a proposal for their upcoming exhibition about food. The request for proposal seemed to combine two of the things that I love the most: play and food. (In undergrad, I even took a research seminar where we got to choose our own topics, and I spent my semester researching comfort food!) So I was over the moon when I got the invitation! The museum flew me to San Diego to visit in person and get a sense of the kind of art they exhibit. During my visit, I got to see how they commission new work from contemporary artists that is designed to be accessible and interactive for children. It really seemed like the perfect opportunity for me.
Spoiler alert... I totally choked. It's now almost a decade later, and I'm still honestly mortified when I think about that proposal. I was definitely intimidated by designing something specifically for children. While much of my work was (and still is!) playful and inspired by games, I had been primarily focused on getting adults to let their guard down and engage freely by tapping into their sense of nostalgia. However, for the most part, children don't have problems engaging freely with interactive work and usually don't feel nostalgia until they are about 12 years old. The target age group was 3-10 year olds—which covers a huge range of physical and cognitive development—and I struggled to adapt my process and voice for this new audience.
I ended up proposing a series of interactive sculptures about balance. I actually still like what I wrote about the general concept. Here's an excerpt:
“Balance is such an important aspect of the food experience, ranging from the way we perceive taste and nourish our bodies, to ecological systems at large. Like food, balance can be experienced singularly or by many people together, and it translates across the boundaries of age, race, and culture. As individuals, we can create harmonious flavors and textures within a dish by tweaking proportions and ingredients, we can maintain a balanced diet by eating healthy food, and we can offset caloric intake by being physically active. As a community, we can support each other by buying from local farmers and participating in food coops. And as a society, we can work to mitigate our competing needs, like profitability vs. sustainability or consistency vs. variety."
However, I think the actual artworks that I designed really fell short. I am still too embarrassed to post images publicly, but I had somehow managed to make them simultaneously too didactic and lacking in poetry, while also abstracting the ideas so that they lost a real connection to food. It was kind of like I focused on the topic, but not the emotions and experience. Unsurprisingly, my proposal was not chosen for the final exhibition (which looked absolutely amazing!).
But thankfully, the people at the New Children's Museum maintained faith in me. They kept in touch over the years and continued to follow my work. And at the end of Dec 2020, they approached me about creating an outdoor installation for the park across the street from the museum. They were about to reopen their doors after months of uncertainty about how the pandemic would progress, and they were looking for artwork to celebrate that.
I was thrilled for another chance to work with them and for an opportunity to redeem myself from that lackluster proposal. We spent a lot of time discussing the challenges that children and families have faced during this time, and what the museum wanted to focus on moving forward. I knew that I wanted to make a piece that didn't shy away from the difficulties of this time, but still remained hopeful for the future. I wanted to create an experience that has enough structure to encourage awareness of ourselves in relation to others, but is also open-ended enough so that kids can exercise their creativity by making up their own rules, goals, and games.
I came up with my first two ideas relatively quickly. But they were both climbing structures, so I wanted to present the museum with one more option that was closer to the ground and used more of the park area. When I was brainstorming, I ended up revisiting my old proposal and found a loose sketch of a noodle-shaped balance beam lurking in my files.
Old sketch from 2012 proposal
In my notes, I had written about how a balance beam shaped like this would require people to communicate with the others as their paths intersect, combining the individual struggle with community interaction. It was like an echo of the concepts that I was chasing with the new proposal!
The format of a balance beam that folded onto itself became my inspiration for my third (and IMHO best) option for the new commission in the park. This time, I had a much more clear vision of what I wanted to offer the community, and the experience and the concept were much more connected.
In the Balance is my first installation specifically created for children, and I am really proud of how it turned out. And I am especially tickled that it was inspired by my original proposal—it reinforces my believe you only fail when you stop trying.
In the Balance is on view at the New Children’s Museum in San Diego until January 2022. Please visit the museum website for information and directions.
I will add more information about In the Balance to this website when I have photos of the finished artwork. In the meantime, I'll be posting process photos on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter!