Description

The artist had a special Barney the Dinosaur stuffed toy growing up. She would take it with her everywhere as a security totem. Her mother had sewn a gold star to its chest to differentiate it from an identical stuffed toy that a friend had owned in order to prevent confusion between the two. In the first grade, the artist brought the Barney toy with her to school during a particularly difficult period after her family had lost their home.  They had been displaced to a small rural town on the border of Wisconsin where her Grandfather let her family live within his derelict farmhouse. Her classmates at the small rural school displayed precocious viciousness in their early learned capacity to bully over perceived differences. It taught the artist early skills in masking and avoidance. She doesn’t remember having the same relationship with her treasured favorite after that episode and her favorite was abandoned at home from there on out. She still has it buried in a box of keepsakes, hidden in the darkness of a closet.