Sense of Place Assignment continued.. Practitioners

Practitioners and Inspirations

Karen Harwell is a philosopher who I explored information of how her work was influenced by her own sense of place which was where she lived as a small child. She explains that her ‘early years were imprinted living in the beauty and majesty of the Colorado Rockies, where she always found the natural world intriguing as well as coherent.’ It sounds as though Harwell was privileged as a child in the sense of the beauty which surrounded her and the comfort which she embraced from her home. I felt as though she worshiped her home and memories because she uses the word “majesty” to depict the image of the Colorado Rockies. Her sense of place is somewhere which re-connects her with the natural world, which influenced why she became a philosopher of the natural world. Harwell’s work has influenced mine in the sense that I love my hometown and grew up recognising and appreciating the beauty of seasons, places and the general outside world.

Another person who I researched was one hundred year old Georgia Brown who has lived in the same home in Hampshire for her whole life. Georgia says ‘I was born here and I will never leave.  ‘I have so many happy memories here. It is a perfect little village and I know almost everyone here.’ She remembers seeing Winston Churchill passing her house when she was younger and also watching the soldiers leave for the First World War. Georgia is an icon to my work because she finds happiness and comfort in her home where she has lived her whole life and no one can take it from her, she has truly imprinted herself there.

An article called “Is the feeling of home ‘being constructed’” talks about a woman who left home but said she did not ever imagine she’d be leaving for such a large space of time. She states “thinking of home for me conjures memories of spicy food, sticky backs, sleepovers with childhood friends, and the immeasurable freedom of driving in a car, among many others”. This is significant to my research about the feeling of being at home because it outlines typical aspects of childhood memories at home and is similar to thing which I associate with home as a child. The poster which I have included in this section fits in nicely with the element of information which has been described. 'Childhood is the most beautiful of all life's seasons' was the quote which I decided to put on the top of the poster. I made the background orange by using the paint bucket on photoshop and the orange conotes the bight, childish nature apparant in the rest of the poster. I drew a flower for the eyes using the paint brush tool and coppied and pasted that one eye onto the other side to make the eyes even. I then painted a catapiller as the smile based on the book 'The Hungry Catapiller' as it is well known to children and so they can identify the animal and become attracted to the poster as well as the vibrancy of the colours.

..more continued below.