Sculptural Object: Spoonfed - A Doll (2008)

Materials: Georgian spoons, Victorian forks, black bean pods, steel wool, doll eyes, steel brads, steel wire, Victorian hairbrush, eucalyptus seed pod, gelatin mold, paper, epoxy resin, soil.

Gazing upward with a rather tragic-comic expression of pathos, Spoonfed was the offspring of an invitation to create a doll for a book by Linda & Opie O'Brien entitled, "Who's Your Dada?"

Not being one to forego a challenge, I sat in my studio puzzling over what a doll meant to me in context of my concerns with found materials.

My own experience of dolls tends to bring me back to my pre-teen years, to those jointed superheroes that filled my days with private adventure. But the single doll that dominates my memory is the two foot tall Dr. Doolittle that spoke when a cord was pulled in his hip. I played with him until he was in pieces, then kept playing with his disembodied head for a few years more.

Since so much about the personal meaning of a doll is generated by a sense of character, I simply began with a face. Taking a wonderful spoon from the early 1800's and cutting features into its surface, the gruff but inquisitive little Spoonfed emerged and demanded the appropriate body. And some soup.

As a table object, he will be better placed rather low, so the viewer towers over him, giving his questioning stare added humor. His dripping spoon hovers over a soup bowl, as if he is pausing for permission to, as it were, eat his words.