As Is #197
(Click for Artist Profile and additional Artwork)
I saw these dolls in a thrift store I frequent. A week later I saw them again, hanging in their bags. Pictures of them played in my mind. Barbie, as with Venuses before her, can initiate travel into worlds both mysterious and familiar. I have photographed them pretty much as they were; gestures cast in polyvinyl bags, heads down, eyes open, naked, mussed. As surely as knowing limits seeing, what I say here will guide your experience with this work. It is like, upon showing you a Rorschach blot, I ask, "Do you see the rabbit?". (This is so even if you think it's not a very good rabbit.) I will only suggest that art which engages the imagination will first reflect the familiar but must also contain windows of ambiguity where understanding is suspended and the mind can play.