Big Black Folder
June 3, 2022
when i started writing the previous blog, the room tour, i noticed something that i actually have completely ignored for about four years. there was a giant black folder staring at me when i closed my bedroom door. it hides behind my open door. i kid you not i haven’t unzipped it in so long. so thats what i did. in an effort to face the completely unreasonable fear of taking out what was inside, i faced multiple pictures and paintings that i did when i was eight years old.
i always say i really like art and that i love media and creativity, but many people don’t see where it came from. most of my creativity is showcased on the internet– on here or social media– or the other parts of my creativity are locked away in my head lol. but i really was a creative young boy. many of my habits now have formed from me being a little artist. for example, when i realized at the end of elementary school that i didn’t love sports, i spent my time doing other things. for instance, i made movies with friends in our backyards on my ipad with imovie. for summer camp i would obviously do the traditional outdoors one, but i also would do this studio art camp down the street from me.
up the stairs to the room above the garage (in south carolina we call them frogs, which i just realized isn’t a normal thing to call a room above a garage), my art teacher turned it into an art studio. it was awesome because it was all wooden and had long picnic tables stained with paints and markers. this was a little safe haven for me and other art oriented kids.
apple slices, frayed paint brushes, and calm classical music surrounded little colin. it was quite tranquil in retrospect and i wish i had the oppurtunity to do it again. my teachers were awesome, and one teacher would work on her easel in front of us while we all worked on different paintings and ideas. she would present an idea, or concept, teach us about the historical context or artist, and then we would go from there. encouraged to ask questions and to be creative, i would calmly attack a blank canvas every couple of days.
in this black folder were some of my projects.
i thought i may share those with you, as well as maybe try to describe them? obviously this is 19 year old colin writing this, and not 8 year old colin. it feels right that now that im double that age, maybe i’ll have a unique view as to what i was thinking when painting and creating.
to begin, i want to show you one of my favorites.
above is a painting of a marsh, i believe. it looks like two young men are in the water at the side of a canoe and were traveling through the vegetation. i love this painting. it’s obviously not good by any means, but it is quite impressive for an 8 year old to come up with. the other part that astonishes me is that i learned quite a bit of history just from this art class.
for instance, coming from the south, often there is a lack of education or correct education in terms of the history of people of color. it is also very common for young students to often cling to students that look like them. there is a psychological understanding for this, but in a culture where integration between groups wasn’t always priority, it seemed worse here. however, when looking at my art, i didn’t always draw people that looked like me, or paint things that reminded me of my life. i was exploring ideas from other people that have different experiences than me. as a white kid, it seemed like i was open to things other than things that i was used to.
this wasn’t my doing, and i attribute it to how i was raised plus experiences such as this art camp. now… i wasn’t like a woke 8 year old. honestly i don’t think i even noticed that i was painting a person of color here. which is a good thing. thanks to my art teachers, i explored diverse history without even realizing it was abnormal for students in the south. in retrospect, i think that i learned some very valuable lessons here. theres so much history that goes unexplored, and through recent social justice issues i think we are finally uncovering the beautiful impacts that BIPOC people have brought to the world, especially America.
now this is more like it. very much young colin like. i really liked drawing people and faces. what is really bothering me about this art is that i specifically remember the lesson that i learned before creating it, and i can’t remember anything about it. some artist had a tendency to draw side profiles integrated with front profiles. i think it was some type of surrealism.
okay but what is interesting about this one is that i chose to do half the face with paper and half with a ripped out book page. in attempting to read what the page is about, i don’t think it has much meaning. it has something to do with gender identity and pop culture, and i don’t think that was my message if i’m being honest.
the beauty of this picture is that there really is no deeper meaning to this. i really just enjoyed doing it. filled me with joy. i mean the guy looks distressed and confused, and it kind of gives me a mental illness vibe, but again i wasn’t super ultra smart back then so i’m not gonna give myself that credit. but it’s a cool one.
ripped cardboard was a cool touch too. i think we did an art camp fully dedicated to physical backgrounds or like layering art to make it cooler— using materials other than inks and paints.
i absolutely adore this one for a multitude of reasons. first off it looks very abstract, and i know exactly what i was attempting to paint. although it wasn’t initially going to be abstract, i remember being so upset with how it was going that i fully switched into abstract mode and made it look abstract. how many times did i just say abstract? basically what i’m saying is that my goal was to make this real, but ended up switching gears halfway through. in the painting itself are blue glass bottles that my mom collects, and i remember seeing one and really wanting to paint them.
if you notice this painting has a sticker at the bottom. colin nemeth, grade 3. i submitted this painting into the “step art” program, hoping to be accepted into a club dedicated to helping really motivated young students get involved in harder and more detailed art. i remember writing a little card about what this was, and what it meant, and that it was abstract. but i didn’t get into the program.
that’s okay because in retrospect thats really stupid and i don’t need a teacher at school to validate my art and my creativity. like, having art graded kind of defeats the entire purpose of art, doesn’t it? i think my work is pretty cool. its gorgeous too. those are some of my favorite colors. it reminds me a lot of the melodrama album art, and i think its really impressive that i turned the painting around. i really wanted it to be a realism painting of a picture i had of the glasses, but instead of starting over i was encouraged to do something new with what i had. this was one of the first times i remember taking something and making it into something different, even if it goes against what you initially wanted/were thinking.
at first when i picked this one up i laughed and was so confused. but after staring at it i think i realized what i was going for. i totally wanted to go for salvador dalí and his melting clock painting. i mean look. the tree, the melting leaves, even the clouds are melting.
upon further research his painting is called the “persistence of memory” and i totally was going for it. completely. like this is not a creative one on my part. but again i think it goes to show that i was really in tune with famous art at my age, and was spending my time outside of class learning too.
i think that the prompt may have been to make something trippy and melting, and this is NOT my best work. i love that i’m defending my younger self like guys i promise i can do better, but like i was EIGHT YEARS OLD. sheesh.
also side note, do u see the snake? i think i had a cool vision there. looks like the snake is coming out of a watering can, like out of the spout with the holes. kind of a dope idea there. and i know that i fully made that up and it is not apart of Dalí’s painting. i liked a lot of that stuff, and i loved animals, and a lot of the time i wish i had the power to talk to animals. i was probably in a snake phase. pretty dope that it can slither though small pores in a watering can and come back into one organism.
seeing this was really cool, and served as a reminder to all the things we did. i remember spending a couple weeks on chinese calligraphy, and we worked in our sketch books practicing it with real ink and tools that were bought from a local asian market.
this is another example of the things that i learned, and the cultures i was exposed to. i have absolutely no idea what that says or means, but if someone knows some chinese maybe i didn’t get it too far off and i got it right.
if you notice there is a little red box too, which is supposed to act like a chinese seal. i believe i made it into my signature for the piece, meaning that it was my work. but normally these seals are used as sign offs on legal documents or art work in chinese culture. (i hope i’m getting that right)
it rolls up into a scroll which is dope, and its made of thin paper. i don’t know what type. i want to say bamboo paper or something like that. but it was cool also using tools and materials that i wasn’t accustomed to either.
i thought i’d finish off with a fun one. i thought this was pretty cool and exemplified a lot of what children experience. colors are brighter, learning is fun, and the idea that it’s okay to get your hands dirty.
this jelly fish inspired picture probably came from my fascination of jelly fish, but also my fear of them. to this day they kind of freak me out. i actually just learned in COLLEGE that jelly fish aren’t spawned from eggs or anything. they’re sessile polyps that grow from the ground and then bud off and float away in their medusa stage. crazy but also absolutely terrifying because they’re like plants but not. can’t believe it took me 19 years to figure that one out.
this picture is paper mache (papier-mâché) i think? i think i tore up colored tissue paper and took some glue or mod podge and went at it. i do remember pretty much using my hands for this. and i also vaguely remember walking home after peeling the clear layers of glue off of my fingers.
of course, this picture has the jelly fish, but it also has something on the ground. i may have been trying to make an anemone but that looks exactly like the polyp of a jelly fish that i explained above and if i did that without realizing that is so cool. also there’s a sand dollar, which i have tons of memories of for some reason that connect me to my great grandmas old condo in florida where would dry out sand dollars.
but i really like the treasure chest, because as i mentioned, even though i was creating cool art, i didn’t let go of the fascination that comes with being a kid. i was probably reading books or watching movies that mentioned buried treasure or old locked away treasure chests at the ocean floor. to me, looking at this kind of balances the creativity that i pat myself on the back for, and the youthfulness that i had in that moment.
kind of cool.
this was a cool experience. i got to relive my past a little bit, and try to reenter the mind of young me.
i hope you enjoyed reading and looking at some of my childhood art. if this doesn’t give you a better sense of why i am who i am i don’t know what will.
i want to say an unsaid thank you to the ladies who ran this art camp, if they ever even got ahold of this blog, and want to emphasize that experiences like these are what shape kids passions and creative development.
now, if you’ve read this far i ask you to go digging in your family archives, if you have them, or maybe even your own art folder. look through and try to do what i did. enter the headspace and find the intricacies in what seems to be basic 8 year old art. it’s pretty dope.
okay thats all i got for u. i did in fact grind out two blog posts in 48 hours. if i’m being honest this probably will not happen again because i don’t have enough words to spew onto a blog post every day. but i couldn’t stop myself this time.
let me know what you think about this one, and i’ll leave a comment section open under this post if i can figure it out. maybe it’ll let you post pics of your own childhood art. i’d love to start a little forum of your art.
alright thats it from me. thank you so much for reading this one and taking the time to come on this journey.
peace and love,
colin
