Lost Childhood Object.

In my 4D intermedia class we were each given a partner who we were supposed to describe a lost childhood object to. Each partner would be tasked with recreating the others lost object. My partner for this activity told me about her favorite sweater growing up. It was gray and had a pink recycling sign on it, which had begun to peel and flake off because of how much she had worn it. I in turn told her of this steampunk watch bracelet I had made when I was eleven. The point of this project was to sympathize with another by recreating something precious to them and to feel the weight of this object's worth, which previously had never even existed to us.

We were aloud to use anything available to us for these "resurrections". Seeing that we had all but moved into our dorms that week and there was already the element of recycling on the sweater I thought I could use this to my advantage. My first plan was to make a sculpture of the sweater out of cardboard. The more I thought of the outcome however, it left me feeling unsatisfied with the solid form of an object

that was by nature meant to be fluid and flexible. This and all the cardboard boxes had been thrown out already. Perhaps I could make it out of papertowl? I had no thread to patch it together with so I used staples instead. This proved to be a disaster seeing that the seems were being torn apart by the slightest of movements.

I then noticed a small, red, plastic bag which I had gotten from the school book store. I cut the bag into three parts, leaving them connected at the top. I then stapled the sides together for the "seams". Then, I finally created the recycling sign by cutting out arrow shapes from a protein bar box and glued then in place. When it was finished I couldn't help but feel a sense of something precious embedded within this reflection of my partners childhood object. It amazed me how valuable something as common as a plastic bag and some staples could become when you link them to a story.

The class finally met and we each exchanged our objects. When I received my lost object it felt both strange and beautiful. Strange because, though it was not an exact copy of the steampunk bracelet I had made in my bedroom all those years ago, my heart still recognized what it meant. I felt hijacked in a way, as if she had traveled through time to save a piece of my past, which I thought was dead and gone. It had a leather band like the original, a safety pin instead of snaps, and the clock faces were hand drawn paper cut outs rather than the gray, cold metal ones.

It was beautiful because it felt as if the soul of my creation had regenerated and was returned to me. Though it may have looked a little different, the heart was still the same.