Turned the whole upstairs part of the house to a bed sheet fort kingdom and my sister and I were “bad “witches and had pet dragons.

We used to play a shoplifting game called the “stupid shit game” where 3-5 friends and I would go into a store like Ross/homegoods/tj max and try to steal the funniest and dumbest items.

When I was a kid I used to play imaginary tea party when my siblings started going to school. They became my imaginary friends. Imaginary versions of my siblings so I wouldn’t be alone.

Me and the kids around the neighborhood all had razor scooters and we pretended they were horses. When we threw them in the grass we pretended they were eating.

My best friend and I pretended we had boyfriends. When we would speak about them in front of our parents, we called them "corns" so they wouldn't know what we were talking about.

My friend and I would play barbies with ken dolls, halfway through the game they would switch “husbands” and start new lives together... we were 9.

When we drove on road trips I would pretend there’s an imaginary man running by the road jumping over trees and cars.

Bug Hotels. We would build “hotels” out of things we found outside and then catch bugs and put them in different “rooms."

When I was growing up before I would go to bed I would imagine a brick wall, every bad thing I ever did showed up as graffiti on the wall.

When I was a kid I pretended I was a mermaid and dove into my mom’s bathtub with no water inside it and broke my collarbone.

My friend and I (two girls) pretended we ran a company called Seven Unions. It had seven departments, each represented by a color of the rainbow.

I convinced my younger brother I was a fairy and that I went through the vent at night to do fairy things.

Thank you for participating! Plays Well with Others is a curated exhibition featuring local and national multidisciplinary artists who create work that engages with play and toys in interactive, mischievous, and subversive ways. The exhibition will occur at the end of the year and include 2D and 3D works that both entertain and unsettle, and will be installed in the gallery space in an immersive installation. I am extremely excited and honored to participate in this exhibition.

Similar to last year’s senior art show, I asked friends, family, and social media followers to anonymously tell me “What’s the strangest thing they played as a child.” I used the answers as prompts to illustrate these experiences, reconnecting us with our childhood's innocence and capacity to envision a world beyond the status quo. I believe that these subconscious impulses make us who we are today, and can shape our personality. This piece will remind viewers of the imperative basic human right to dream freely toward the future, helping us realize that we all have more in common than what we think.

This show is curated by Jessica Todd

Jessica Todd is a curator, writer, and arts administrator who is passionate about building the creative infrastructures that support artists. She seeks to amplify the voices of artists outside of the mainstream who create work that is fresh, innovative, impactful, interdisciplinary, and engaging new audiences. Jessica holds an MFA from Kent State University, and, since 2014, has been the Residency Manager of the Rauschenberg Residency in Captiva, Florida, an artists’ community serving over 70 artists per year of all disciplines. Jessica lives in Tampa, Florida.

This show will be exhibited at The Alliance for the Arts

The Alliance for the Arts is a vibrant and welcoming nonprofit visual and performing arts center located in the heart of southwest Florida. Since the 1970s, they’ve been transforming lives and improving community through the arts. Their year-round schedule of events has become a staple for our community to connect with each other and to the arts during engaging gallery exhibitions, inspiring art classes and stimulating theatre productions. The Alliance is creative space that spurs and supports self-expression, imagination and equity.