Toy Soldiers

Pablo Picasso believed that it took a long time to grow young. As a man who painted in his pajamas, mismatched outfits, and the occasional Indian headdress, you get the sense he was indeed a boy in a grown man’s body. He never actually left behind childhood. Sure, you have to make rent, file tax returns, and do your own grocery shopping (Fred has still yet to master this), but that artistic seven year-old is better resuscitated if you ever want to create anything ever again.

We are constantly looking for small ways to fold traces of childhood back into everyday life. Fred spends a lot of time in his home office and he has these plastic toy soldiers strewn about his desk. When decorating his space, he tends to mix polar opposites—the masculine with the feminine (wildlife objet such as an alligator head and an Asian water buffalo horn display against pink walls, for example), the soft with the hard, the old with the new. These toy soldiers serve as little (pun intended) reminders of where we come from. They remind us to keep dreaming, to keep playing...to keep growing young.