LIFEINPLASTER (2022)

slipcast ceramic, elastic, marble paste, salvaged wood, acrylic, hardware

BARBARA is the subject of the installation LIFEINPLASTER, an articulated ceramic "doll" made from ceramic casts in a handmade plaster mold of a Barbie doll's individual parts. Her body contains 9 separate torsos, and even more hang around her environment, an organic section of her "dreamhouse" mounted to a basement wall, complete with a dollhouse sized lamp. Each part of her body has individually carved details done with marble paste after firing, and she is strung together with elastic like Barbies of old, with red yarn emerging from her interior.

From one perspective, LIFEINPLASTER is a sculpture/installation I made. From another, it's a series of candid photographs of what lies in the recesses of our lives. The stories we construct for our childhood toys don't just evaporate, they linger at the bottom of our adult minds, just out of sight. The Barbies™ and Legos™ and All™ Other™ Toys™ I played with as a child weren't destroyed by my rough play, and their plastic shells will outlive you and I both. Just as the microplastics linger in the body of a toddler chewing on a barbie's leg, the idea of Barbara lingers in the basement of my mind, ever changing with her dozens of points of articulation, emerging on occasion in my artwork.

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