BARBIE, KEN and TOYOLOGY

Since the world is currently fascinated by Barbie, I want to show off my own Barbie doll -part of my Toyology series. Over the last several years, when I come upon discarded toys, I resurrect them. I make display boxes out of castoff wooden drawers that have their own long history of use and abuse. For each assemblage, I subsurface-mount a photograph of the discovery site to the back wall of the box. I paint the sidewalls with location markings and with graphics related to the toy’s background. On a side panel, I paint, in miniature, the graffiti I saw in the vicinity of the site. The toy, the location and the graffiti are all separate stories that come together.

Here is the world where I found my Barbie doll - Rodney Avenue in Buffalo. Barbie looked like she had been chewed up by a dog but looked better after I bought her a cute outfit at a thrift stop. I found a reference for Ken and painted him on the side wall. I think Barbie had an adventure on the wild side, but she's not talking.

To see more toys in this series, go to Portfolio > Toyology