Untitled (Beanie Baby), 1999-2000
Fabric, thread, and stuffing
8 by 6 feet approx (destroyed)
This is me comically grieving whatever marketing option was available to me going into the arts at the end of school.
I wanted to make a beanie baby the size of a state fair prize, Texas Size, of an all white "Marylin Manson" from the image he was selling at the time.
I'm not a fan of his, but I borrowed that image as a way to use "alien" in various images and work in the last part of my time at Otis College.
There were paintings of Alf, MM, and other "in between" type of characters I felt belonged to media corporations at large.
At the time, celebrity and image crafting were very remote from most people's lives, especially from my life.
In the 90s things that were in every magazine had a feeling of belonging to the world, not to an actual person. The internet definitely washed artistic appropriation of meaning.
Contemporary usage of popular signifiers is pretty much for marketing alignment or exploitation at this point, this was all coming from a different place.