nooks and crannies
Installations in Non-Gallery Spaces

Arizona State University Art Museum
September 15, 2001 - January 6, 2002

Jill McVarish

Jill McVarish

Location: American Gallery Floor

Even though they are usually considered children's playthings, dolls have had a profound effect on their human owners. Historically, humans in almost every society have formed strange relationships with dolls, treating them almost as living creatures. Both children and adults play with them, learn to socially interact through them, at times fear them, even perform religious rituals with them.

Using the doll form, Jill McVarish affords museum goers a chance to let their imaginations run wild in the traditional setting of the American Gallery. Using the same child as a model, McVarish has created small doll-like figures with different facial expressions. Look inside their heads, however, and various mini-dioramas, like frozen dreams, fill the empty spaces where human brains might be, giving the illusion that McVarish's young boy dolls have the capability of breathing and thinking for themselves.

Jill McVarish attended Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam and went on to receive a BFA in Painting from San Francisco Art Institute. Her work has been included in exhibitions at: Gallery One, Mendocino, CA; The Boonville Hotel, Boonville, CA; Buchion Gallery, San Francisco, CA; Diego Rivera Gallery, San Francisco, CA; and a mural work painted in the Edinbourgh Castle in San Francisco commissioned by the Scottish Cultural Art Foundation of San Francisco.

Contact artist Jill McVarish with questions about her work for
nooks and crannies by e-mail at jillmcvarishnooksandcrannies@hotmail.com

 

Return to the nooks and crannies exhibition webpage.

For more information contact John Spiak at spiak@asu.edu.

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