Dan
Farnum

Growing Up

The recognition of adulthood is connected to the acceptance that childhood has slipped into the past. Memories from the places where we searched for maturity and independence are the residue that is left behind. The interplay between immediate experience and adult recollection of these spaces is where I search for the understanding of adulthood.

As children develop they move farther and farther from home and into secluded places such as schoolyards, suburban streets, trails, and empty lots adjacent to neighborhoods. These locations are where children walk home from school, ride dirt bikes, smoke cigarettes, and act out the fantasy of adulthood. The fragility of youth is also exposed in these spaces. The absence of supervision, naive experimentation, and the threat of injury and abductions create an environment filled with uncertainty and the dangers of the unknown. This scenario parallels the psychological transition that people endure in their pursuit of maturity.

As an adult, my search for clarity and the understanding of maturity continues through the recollection of childhood memories and the expectations of what it means to be a grown up. My father passed away when I was a twenty. This event and his resulting absence propelled me into adulthood, thus impacting my recollection of childhood. The loss of my father allows me to recognize the lingering memories of adolescence that reside in the spaces where I attempted to shed my youth. The distance between memory and immediate experience is obscured. This transitory space is where I collect fragments that evoke the universal sensation of becoming an adult.