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 […]
Not many people have heard of Morton Bartlett, a quiet Bostonian bachelor who had been an orphan till adulthood. Upon becoming an adult, Bartlett began to long for a family of his own. His solution to this desire: he would create them himself from plaster and paint. The only book that I know of about […]
Several years ago I was consuming beer alongside my dear poet-friend and wine-drinking Mary Ruefle. We were sitting in a pub in Kalamazoo, Michigan talking about the random moments of life as we usually did over lilting libations. It was this night she told me about doll murders … the subject no doubt coming up […]