“Look Dad, I made a modest studio apartment for my Malibu Stacy doll. This is the kitchen, this is where she prints her weekly feminist newsletter … Dad! You’re not listening to me!”
This clip from the simpsons got me thinking firstly about childhood architecture and things that have been hidden within childhood games, tv programmes and things, which I will gradually release in a series of posts much like my small tiny spaces ones .
But also it got me thinking about shoeboxes. Firstly, like Lisa's studio apartment, I thought about the conveniant dimensions they supply for a house, like on blue peter where they were fashioned into rooms similar to 'shoebox art' exhebition pieces in 2010 (see below)
or even like phoebe's doll house in friends with "slides instead of stairs" and the "liquorice room". Shoe boxes provide a small space to house themes, the four walls providing a barrier to contain a minature world and free design. It's like a kit house!
and secondly, their use as containers. Shoeboxes for me mean the shoebox appeal in primary school. First you chose the gender of your child, then the age, 2-4, 5-9, 10-14. Most year I'd choose a child similar in age, imagining what the foreign version of me or another child would appreciate in what I imagined as a shanty home, empty of toys, dark and dire. Inside, my shoebox would begin to take on a theme, kind of like Phoebe's kit house, constructed around this person. Every item significant in it's colour, size, position in the box and relation to other objects, kind of like a minature space. I'm definatly going to have to do it this year now. http://www.operationchristmaschild.org.uk/how-to-pack-your-shoebox, http://www.operationchristmaschild.org.uk/article/storyID/53
