Dear Children,

I recently decided to take Fashion Promotion and Communication to study for my Foundation year at UCA Epsom. I’m quite scared that I’m taking too much of a risk, even though it is something I have wanted to do 5 years previously. I wanted to take Fashion and Textiles before, but I found it didn’t suit me as perfectly as I had hoped when I had my tutorial. I feel out of place, and I have become shyer in the process of meeting my friend Nick. I have become shyer as I become less and less sure about my place in the world. I try to get on with people, and some of them have accepted me.  I have a crucial feeling I can’t replace, that I may want to become a cartoonist. It involves my love of visionary work, but I can also write. I thought I may want to get into film, but it doesn’t interest me entirely, and I my lack of control in a situation would nerve me. I have also considered becoming a teacher, but maybe for teenagers. I’m not sure about this, because my ideal would be to work in my own company possibly, be a freelance artist, and be successful in my own right. However, I see more and more how patient I can be with people, and how I have been given a gift of understanding, humility, and light for those who need it, and I think this would be fitting for me to share in an education environment. I could possibly teach teenagers and adults at a university!

I have considered studying Creative Writing and Journalism away from home in UCA, Farnham. Studying writing without art is a painful and confusing thing to think about, and it tears me that I possibly will be without art. I am not sure if I am passionate or committed enough to English to pursue a possible 3 years of my life to it. My family thinks I am very good at it, my friends ask me for advice, and my teachers say I’m very articulate when I want to be, through writing and through spoken word. I have been told that I am intelligent and know how to speak. I want to try and involve myself as much as possibly with the equipment they have in Epsom (screen printing, etc) so that I can also practice in Farnham and continue my art there, whilst still enhancing and studying Creative Writing and Journalism. I want to be prepared and stand out, wherever I go, and succeed.

I think living away from home will be good for me. I have stayed here for a long time, and I would like to experience who I am outside my family home. I would like to learn how to take care of myself, and become responsible. I want to be able to make my own limitation and decisions. I know I will find that staying outside home will be excruciatingly painful, but I need to make decisions like that so that I can be who I want to be. I need to go.

Overall, writing this made me feel a little better! Fashion was a risk to take, but I will learn a lot from it, and it is one of my many passions, and I know I would regret it if I didn’t take it, even if it doesn’t exactly become a career for me. I have a lot of time to figure everything out, but currently I am happy to be in education and have some idea of what I want to do.

* 

Journal: Page 1

'Monster'.

by Claudia Aceituno

Monster. Acrylic Paint, pens, sharpie, sugar paper, coloured paper, nail polish (it's neon orange but it didn't show in the scan). 

One of my favourite characteristics I like to portray in my work is the element of ‘Loud-mouth’, which I tried to express on this page. It was an open mouth collage with sugar paper, acrylic paint, nail polish and pens. Instead of creating a mouth with human colours, I wanted to experiment with different materials, and express myself without having to adjoin the colours to humans, but I also wanted it to be bold and attract attention, in the same way my own mouth does. This helped me conclude that the skin colour of the person, or myself, was also to be a different colour, but darker as to help flourish the colours of the mouth. Having always attributed the colour blue (especially dark blue) with myself, I decided this would be most fitting. It was then that the person became monstrous.  

The braces are particularly important to this piece. When I got my braces put, it has brought up a lot of conflicting emotions in me. I felt nostalgia. In my opinion, no matter the person who has braces, the braces themselves always tend to demonstrate a sense of youth. Feeling stuck in a child's body when you're an adult is a major part of my art work, and is how I feel a lot of the time. I felt insecure because the braces enforced that into me without permission.

The first of this was ugliness. Having being satisfied with my buck-tooth personality, it was hard to have something attached to me that was alien and metallic. The colours show the alienation from me.  Collaging my mouth with braces was a really great coping mechanism for me to deal with it, as well as people consoling me. One of my favourite artists is Andy Warhol, and it always excites me that you are able to present the same picture but still be able to change it entirely through colour. I think that is present in this piece.

This brought upon my thoughts of correction and beauty. Braces themselves are a symbol of correction to aim for an ‘idylic’ state of perfection of some ‘broken’ part of the body (in this case teeth), but there is not much reason for it besides for that person to become more physically appealing*.  I tried to demonstrate the agony of this process through the scream, by the waves/the wrinkles by the face, and the unnatural stretch of the mouth. This includes the agony of the braces themselves, but also the agony of trying to achieve beauty.

Since this is my second time with braces, it shows the constant dissatisfaction and forcefulness of mending the body. The change that we go through may conclude in the person becoming something else entirely. The braces are a ‘barrier’ to the monster so that it may become ‘corrected’ and more apt for society’s expectations. It may be a barrier to being heard, because you are seen as childlike. It shows that the struggle of being who you are and what society wants you to be. There may be no winner in this battle, or maybe they are interchangeable, which is why the monster/creature looks human, despite unnatural colours and size.

"You smell familiar. Have you ever taken heroine?" by Claudia Aceituno

He reminds me of an ex boyfriend I used to have. His name was Jason King, and the age gap between us was almost as large as Madonna and Jesus.

This man sitting next to me smells the same as he. He reeks of years of addiction and mistakes and I want to lean on his shoulder and wear pink cashmere.

He seems nervous and so am I. I am in a dangerous place. I cross my legs in case he touches me, and soon after he mimics my transition. I smile, and I enjoy the game while it lasts. I come to realise my concrete glare is fixed at his loose tattooed skin and skinny legs.

Each sour breath tells tales of experience and pain. We play and he glances but I am too afraid of the past. We turn and swivel, he tries to run but he is avoided and condemned. I think how hard it is to be dirty.

I take a chance and glance and he is younger than what was expected. A young Brad Pitt, dare he accept it.

I want to ask him, if he ever felt lost. If he ever needed a woman's arms to hang from to replace the needle in his arm. He wears white and he seems so saintly, his smiles withered and pasted. But before I can tell him I love him he walks and leaves, and I sit, silently, and cry with ease.

An important thing to always remember is to never take second best, and always aim to be the best person you can be. People will respect you, and you will be happy. If people don't like you, it's not your problem because you are the greatest thing to happen on the planet. You are beautiful and full of promise. I promise.

Adulthood.

It’s the 12^th today, and it’s only a few steady days until my birthday.

I have heard many things from different people. My parents already expect me to be an adult, but it seems at home because my home is where I act most childlike. Obi says turning 18 is a momentous moment, where everything you think is real changes, one of the biggest changes being that ‘you don’t give a shit, and you won’t take shit from anyone’ and that ‘you won’t waste time’. Enoque tells me it’s like any other birthday, and I shouldn’t be yearning for an age that presumes my maturity and I should just ultimately ‘be’ rather than ‘expect to be’.

Whether expectations are interpreted as naiive or hopeful, adulthood has been something that I have been waiting for a long while. The places where I experienced glimpse of adulthood were also areas of my life that restricted or kept me from truly achieving it, such as school, family, friends, my talents and interests. 

However, these people and activities will still be a huge part of my identity, but it is the drastic circumstances in which the change would ensue. My family will expect different things from me, the majority of my friends will leave to university, and will subsequently make other friends at their new ‘homes’ (I will do the same in art school), my relationships with people will have more depth, and my interests will mature and develop.

It seems that my change in identity is just around the corner, and although undoubtedly excited, I feel afraid. In many ways I am comfortable in my nearly-grown-up-but-not-quite lifestyle. I live at home and have little responsibility for myself. I am financially adept, and I don’t have to take many risks.

I forget that I have undergone many risky things in my life, but there is that next step I need to take. Yesterday night I was sat with my friend Phillipe, both of us stinking of cider and cigarettes in the backmy parents’ car, where he shared a valuable lesson with me that he learnt when working at his new job. He told me that the key to success was ‘going the extra mile’. He told me that small things that he has done for the company, working extra hours, talking to his co-workers, have now made him invaluable in his workplace, which is really special for someone that is only 18, and didn’t finish school. I think this thesis applies to growing up too. For example, I can easily rely on my parents and friends to get me jobs, or even rely on teachers to push me through school; or I can choose to have a better awareness of who I am and what I want, and grasp every opportunity to grow with both hands.

I think this change is inevitable, but time will only tell how soon. More than anything in my life, I have wanted to embody a woman who knows and gets what she wants. I want to take the positive advice I’m given and become someone. Aspiration and courage will get me where I want to be. It’s that first step to adulthood I need right now to do that, and I can’t wait to see what there is waiting for me on the other side.

New Start: New Company

1 July 2013

It’s strange to be writing again, after such a long time. I thought it might be helpful to write, I have now finished school and never have much to do anymore. I am gaining some money for a living, buying clothes and accessories and meeting old friends, but my brain tends to melt and not engage in many activities. I have become a selfish lazy fiend, and I want to attend to some kind of productivity.

Since school has finished, I have endeavoured to try and find my ‘inner feeling’ within my art work. A woman told me that I have not ‘found myself yet’, which was quitter discouraging as I would like to think of myself as found, and many would agree with me. I have tried to paint, draw, and most of all I have regained and reapplied my love for fashion and reinvention. On other websites I have gained a lot of attention from both people I know and on the internet, and it has encouraged me to record my outfits daily.

In addition to this, I have also met up with my ‘brother’ recently, who has started his own business in making T-shirts for skateboarders (Taboo). Most may think that he is naiive to fixate and have so much trust in a business rather than finish his studies, but I’d like to support him as an artist and friend. He noticed my interest in his work and knowledge, (I constantly asked questions and asked him to edit my designs). We may collaborate our different talents and minds to create what I have been wanting for a long time: to put what I have made into drawing and ideas into real material designs that exist in the outside world, instead of hiding in my sketchbooks. I was able to create a design I have wanted to make since my dad went on a business trip to China, and he was able to edit on Photoshop what I had imagined it to be like.  

He reassures me our plan will work. He has established a relationship with a big company (which I don’t know the name of), but we are both highly aware of businesses, but as he has been attending the business side of Clothing for some months, I believe that his business and both of our creativity will blend together well.

Saying this we have immensely different tastes. It’s quite hard to explain. His designs for Taboo are effortlessly masculine, and he is quite simplistic and uses humour to get his message across. It is quite clear in those designs that he is mainly based on skateboarding, and he doesn’t use lots of colour (although he is somewhat obsessed with it in real life.) I am quite similar, but I realise that I am quite feminine, and my designs are domineered on my personal life and thoughts. The designs I have come of up with so far don’t exactly conjure his enthusiasm for my designs, but hopefully he has faith in my artwork and finds them amiable, but as he mentioned, he might not wear it himself (therefore they are secular to certain people).

My intention is to make clothes for the model teenager, whatever that is. Most of my designs I think project the feminist attitude, women wanting to voice a message about themselves and their intentions and thoughts. I think that my designs can also apply to men (and other genders obviously). In this, I have learnt to have more faith in my own work, and be able to be okay with others not necessarily liking or understanding what I am trying to show. I hope the rest of my designs and efforts are just as well as the first. I know my brain never stops working when it comes to art and that comes with that.

When making a fashion line, it is inevitable that I am going to need models for this procedure. I took photos of a dress that I wanted to sell, and sold it within half an hour! My ‘brother’s’ sister (also my ‘sister’) modelled for me and it looked a little like this: (3 selected, the bottom one is me! Haha.)

I hope that my photography will get better, so that I am able to perfectly portray what I am trying to sell, and make it attractive. From time to time I miss the time where I would take photos, calling my friends to model for me in strange outfits and poses. My confidence majorly played a part to this not becoming a habit, and I have made a list of several people who would be perfect to play a part in this.

To finish this first post, I want to add how glad I am for everything going on in my life!

Hopefully this will turn out well for me and my partner.

-Youutterwasteofperfection

Claudia A / Valentina