secret garden

As a young child, I loved to get lost in the world of books and the different possibilities they presented. One of those treasured stories was Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden, where little Mary Lennox, unwanted by her colonialist parents, is orphaned in India by a cholera outbreak and sent to live with her equally loveless uncle in the Yorkshire countryside. In the beginning of the story, Mary is a sallow, unpleasant child, who blossoms through the discovery of a secret garden along with her cousin Colin, a cripple who was hidden away from the world so as to avoid reminding his father of his cherished wife's death in giving birth to Colin. It is definitely a sappy story - all conflicts are resolved, the uncle does in the end realize his love for his son and also his niece Mary, and everyone lives happily ever after, including the servants and poor locals who befriend the children. The book also skates over any possible tensions between the people who work for Mary's miserly uncle and the richness of the Manor, or that Mary's party parents live in colonial India doing who knows what to the people there, but this is a children's book from 1909 when England was at the height of thinking its imperialist urges were still fully cool.

For a young person, this book brings out the central theme of what all children ultimately desire: to live in a world of love, friendship, kindness, and compassion, where everyone is able to get along, and the child is safe in the comfort of the ones who love her. It's a basic utopian concept really, which is at the heart of most of my work. Using bright, colorful materials which are often reminiscent of childhood (stickers, old school books, children's nature guides and encyclopedias), I like to construct the world as I would like to see it: colorful, diverse, friendly, exciting, imaginative, special, beautiful, and fun.

I see these worlds not as separate from or unaware of the strife and conflict which plague our society today, but as the unactivated potential we each hold inside ourselves. I like to take an optimistic approach in imagining a space where our differences can co-exist and be appreciated. My vision is of a community that is not based on this impossible idea that everyone love one another, but one where we are all free to live our lives as we like, as long it does not involve the oppression of others. This is my secret garden, where colorful flowers bloom; where children are nurtured to enjoy life and its complexities and challenges; where in the end, we have fun. Basically havin' a blast.