The idea for this piece was made in 1987. Originally it was to be a wall of porcelain Vivien Leigh dolls, somewhere in a populated area of the city where would sure to be degradation of the piece over time, which is actually what the piece is (not the dolls). I had received my entrance into the School of the Art Institute of Chicago with a series of drawings, all with this central theme. Existence is nothing without the lack of it. Life is nothing without the parameters of death, even art needs a frame of some sort or another. Now, I can only really afford plastic baby dolls. The idea is the same. The only difference is that the second idea was realized. In my early work I reveled in the beginnings and endings of things, to establish boundaries. The new work reverberates with the commonplace, A blurred line between art and the ordinary.
With one of the two dolls that were left over from the doll totem piece was places in a clear plastic contain. It became an common artifact of a common event.
I made a similar piece in 1988, with a grant from the NEA. This comprised a clothesline of a hundred T-shirts running through Lincoln Park in Chicago. I filmed the theft of the shirts over time.
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