Toys for My Middle Age and Beyond
I combine discarded post-consumer items, like videogame controllers, cameras, fax machines, dust busters, irons, and electronic toys with other materials to make new sculptural objects. These gadgets yield surprising transformations; an iron resembles a jet ski, a dust buster becomes a goddess, and a Mr. Potato Head waves from the front of an elderly person’s cane. These everyday materials are used to examine the nature of play and work in the face of rapidly changing technology and a culture where the “must haves” of today become the obsolete trash of tomorrow. My work reflects my reaction and expression to issues that affect our physical world and psychological existence as human beings. The use of found objects serves to engage us on more immediate level based on our own memories and experiences from childhood. I try to use objects from a variety of age groups from toddlers to teenagers to adult. Just as the objects represent a variety of different types of work and games, I would like to break down barriers between people so that people of all ages, preferences, and genders could try on each other’s games/work. Some sculptures combine popular toys that originated in the 1950s and 1960s with devices associated with aging and disability such as walking sticks and walkers. I hope people will be reminded that inventiveness and willingness to play can occur at any age.