Artist Jessica Harrison works in a place where most of us would be afraid to even look. But the result of her labor forces us to gaze into the darkness as if into a frozen-in-time scene of the macabre, a little fantasy place of dark dreams like tiny sparks of stars. My maternal grandmother, Alice […]
One of the strangest days was the morning I heard of Alexander McQueen’s death. It was strange because in the moments of that morning I was in a state of dark emotion that made his suicide even more eerie and oddly poignant. Lately, I have been watching his fashion shows again, the doll-like models whose […]
The wonderfully creepy Twilight Zone episode, “After Hours” is a visual manifestation of something I have thought about often, surrealistically. I have always wondered about inanimates left alone, left to their own devices. I know this is odd and I know intellectually that inanimates do not come to life, but it is still something my […]
I discovered Dare Wright, the reclusive author of haunting and still provocative and popular children’s books like The Lonely Doll and Edith and Big Bad Bill while I was working in a library in Michigan. Like most of the books I have come to treasure, these books came to me, sitting alone on a table […]
I recently watched the Twilight Zone episode, “The Living Doll,” starring Talky Tina, a murderous doll who is representative of a living little girl’s emotional frustration and pain. The episode first aired on November 1, 1963 and starred Telly Savalas as the controlling, angry stepfather who, intentionally or not, terrorized his young stepdaughter out of […]
I like any art that forces me to tap into my inner voyeur. The entirety of the Richard Hawkins show on now at The Art Institute of Chicago was an amazing way to spend a cool afternoon with my best friend who’s visiting and my sweet love, Don. The altered dollhouses by Richard Hawkins is […]