I have for some years now been creating a series of works
composed of toys and other mass-produced cultural
artifacts, which could be seen as Joseph Cornell boxes writ
large: they are four feet long, three feet tall and between
three and six inches deep. What interests me about mass
market toys is that because they're designed to grab kids'
attention as forcefully and quickly as possible they go
right to the heart of the way people see the world at a
particular time, revealing things about our culture and
attitudes which in other contexts are much more modulated.
Sometimes my sculptures are built around a particular
persona in pop culture how their images have evolved over
time; sometimes they seek to recapture a particular moment
like Christmas 1959 or 1919, and many impose a deliberately
spurious, quasi-scientific order on the toys by linking
them to particular historical eras, like ancient Egypt, the
Middle Ages, the Roman Empire or early America. There are
also three dimensional cartoons, imaginary worlds, and more
philosophical pieces like 'The Bluebird of Happiness.' With
engineer John Melzian I've recently begun to create
electro-mechanically operated tableaux inside cabinets,
inspired by the seaside entertainments which fascinated me
as a child in places like Bridlington on the east coast of
England.