Huggable Archetypes
Part art, part craft, part postmodern protest against mass production, Adrienne Gibb’s handmade plush toys are squeezable, loveable, huggable and stuffed with irony.
Story by Tony Martins
Animation by Lawrence Callender
Adrienne Gibb can certainly talk the talk of an art theory graduate degree holder (because she is one). But she doesn't take the theory, or herself, too seriously. How can she? Almost half of the space in her house is devoted to the crafting of hand-made stuffed toys. Intellectually rigorous “art toys,” but toys nonetheless.
Clever, articulate, and keenly attuned to irony, Gibb draws on her art theory training to describe the creations with oh-so-academic phrasings such as “invented material genealogy” and “three-dimensional fabric sculptures,” and “absurdist hybridizing sensibility.” Her cleverness is also evident in the decidedly adult names she gives to the toys, some of which are fish goddess, modernist little girl, hairy chest man, and Raggedy Ann on acid.
Gibb, 37, is co-founder and chief toy maker in the Fabricawakuwaku Stuffed Animal Collective. That Gibb and her friend Pamela Lawler are the only members is not problematic to Gibb because the word “collective” has more than one meaning for this Collective.
“We call ourselves a collective not only because more than one person makes the dolls but also to draw meaning and therefore value away from an individual identity,” explained Gibb. “Traditionally in the world of fine arts there is we think a stodgy need to ascribe meaning to an individual identity, a probably male artist, a genius.”
While Gibb’s master’s degree in Japanese modernism means she can colour her doll-making motivations with art theory, she is also wary of the often impenetrable nature of such theory and therefore takes a particular approach to it: “You have to do it with a strong sense of the absurd.”
That same sense applies to her toys. Gibb says she felt a creative urge to make “weird dolls” for years, particularly when she had trouble finding cool toys for kids. So she and Lawler took matters into their own hands, setting out to depict iconic symbols “in a really weird way.”
“It started out as play time,” said Gibb. “At first, we only worked on the dolls when we got together.” But the more they thought about what they were doing, the more it became a kind of intellectually infused artistry.
Gibb conceives of the dolls as archetypes or children’s art or “primitive art.” The toys are usually gender ambiguous, minimal, and totemic—sort of like voodoo dolls sans needles, though complete with what Gibb calls “a magical feeling.”
Some of the toys are clearly created as little girls and named as such; others are bunnies, kitties, or bears, while still others are really only shapeless blobs, sometimes with faces, sometimes without.
“There was a sense that we were pursuing an aesthetic, but we couldn’t define it,” recalls Gibb.
What’s clear is the kinship between Fabricawakuwaku offerings and the burgeoning global industry devoted to art toys and strange dolls marketed chiefly to adults. Drawing liberally from Japanese manga illustration, graffiti art, and hip-hop culture, the art toy movement offers something for everyone: from one-of-a-kind vinyl figures for the discerning collector, to mass- produced key chains, T-shirts, and plush dolls.
It’s the mass-produced part that rubs Gibb and Lawler the wrong way.
“We’re interested in creating an alternative to the commercialized mass-produced stuffed animal,” said Gibb in artitudezine.com, “in search of the stuffed animal with good karma.”
Like the art toy movement in general, Fabricawakuwaku purposefully blurs the line between art and consumerism. As art, the toys were featured in a group art show called “Foundling” this summer at Ottawa’s Cube Gallery as well as in local Art in the Park events. As consumables, the dolls are available for purchase on the Fabricawakuwaku web site. Prices begin at around $30.
Even if art theory is not your bag, these toys function very well as mere toys and are good for a squeeze and a laugh.
As Gibb said in artitudezine.com, the stuffed animal is “conventionally a mass-produced, cheap, garish, ubiquitous commodity. We find treating it within the context of ‘art,’ and in terms of art theory, hilarious.”
Clever, articulate, and keenly attuned to irony, Gibb draws on her art theory training to describe the creations with oh-so-academic phrasings such as “invented material genealogy” and “three-dimensional fabric sculptures,” and “absurdist hybridizing sensibility.” Her cleverness is also evident in the decidedly adult names she gives to the toys, some of which are fish goddess, modernist little girl, hairy chest man, and Raggedy Ann on acid.
Gibb, 37, is co-founder and chief toy maker in the Fabricawakuwaku Stuffed Animal Collective. That Gibb and her friend Pamela Lawler are the only members is not problematic to Gibb because the word “collective” has more than one meaning for this Collective.
“We call ourselves a collective not only because more than one person makes the dolls but also to draw meaning and therefore value away from an individual identity,” explained Gibb. “Traditionally in the world of fine arts there is we think a stodgy need to ascribe meaning to an individual identity, a probably male artist, a genius.”
While Gibb’s master’s degree in Japanese modernism means she can colour her doll-making motivations with art theory, she is also wary of the often impenetrable nature of such theory and therefore takes a particular approach to it: “You have to do it with a strong sense of the absurd.”
That same sense applies to her toys. Gibb says she felt a creative urge to make “weird dolls” for years, particularly when she had trouble finding cool toys for kids. So she and Lawler took matters into their own hands, setting out to depict iconic symbols “in a really weird way.”
“It started out as play time,” said Gibb. “At first, we only worked on the dolls when we got together.” But the more they thought about what they were doing, the more it became a kind of intellectually infused artistry.
Gibb conceives of the dolls as archetypes or children’s art or “primitive art.” The toys are usually gender ambiguous, minimal, and totemic—sort of like voodoo dolls sans needles, though complete with what Gibb calls “a magical feeling.”
Some of the toys are clearly created as little girls and named as such; others are bunnies, kitties, or bears, while still others are really only shapeless blobs, sometimes with faces, sometimes without.
“There was a sense that we were pursuing an aesthetic, but we couldn’t define it,” recalls Gibb.
What’s clear is the kinship between Fabricawakuwaku offerings and the burgeoning global industry devoted to art toys and strange dolls marketed chiefly to adults. Drawing liberally from Japanese manga illustration, graffiti art, and hip-hop culture, the art toy movement offers something for everyone: from one-of-a-kind vinyl figures for the discerning collector, to mass- produced key chains, T-shirts, and plush dolls.
It’s the mass-produced part that rubs Gibb and Lawler the wrong way.
“We’re interested in creating an alternative to the commercialized mass-produced stuffed animal,” said Gibb in artitudezine.com, “in search of the stuffed animal with good karma.”
Like the art toy movement in general, Fabricawakuwaku purposefully blurs the line between art and consumerism. As art, the toys were featured in a group art show called “Foundling” this summer at Ottawa’s Cube Gallery as well as in local Art in the Park events. As consumables, the dolls are available for purchase on the Fabricawakuwaku web site. Prices begin at around $30.
Even if art theory is not your bag, these toys function very well as mere toys and are good for a squeeze and a laugh.
As Gibb said in artitudezine.com, the stuffed animal is “conventionally a mass-produced, cheap, garish, ubiquitous commodity. We find treating it within the context of ‘art,’ and in terms of art theory, hilarious.”
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