Artist Statement:
For this Zine assignment I wanted to create a story about rediscovering childhood joy. We all have had a childhood dream or passion that is either still alive or has been burned out or buried by reality. For this Zine I decided to make the dream a young boy’s dream of becoming a pilot. While this could’ve been anything, I chose this theme in particular because I thought it would be easy to illustrate and understand, with the visual of a plane tying the story together. I also have a good friend who grew up loving aviation and remote-control planes who is currently following his dream and going to school to become a pilot.
I made the Zine follow the boy’s life from childhood to adulthood, and show how his dream was suppressed, and then rediscovered later in life. In the Zine, I wanted to show a typical way that many people’s dreams come to an end, going through school, being told their dream isn’t achievable, and accepting reality and abandoning their dream for financial stability. I did this through showing the boy’s dream being lost through school, going to business school, and accepting the everyday corporate slog in a big city. After an epiphany, he chases his dream by going to flight school, becoming a pilot, and inspiring a young boy to do the same.
While the theme/story of this particular Zine is about following a dream of planes/becoming a pilot, my hope with this Zine is that anyone that views it can recognize the message of rediscovering childhood joy, see themselves in the story, and possibly rediscover their childhood dream in doing so.
