Deborah Colotti

I make art with found objects. I find them, or they find me. Using animal bones and Barbie doll parts, in Spring 2004, I created a room sized suspended installation for  Sonoma State U. In 2003, a carload of baby doll parts (all legs and torsos) provided the texture for formal sculptures. Over the past five years, household linens, combined with photographs and text, inspired dozens of hanger and clothesline hung artworks. I began my ongoing series of altered Barbie dolls, “the Barbs”, in 1996. To date, I have created 160+ dolls ranging from the melted skin of “Nuclear Barbie” to a doll mummified by her own hair.

In my assembled artworks and installations viewers find humor, angst, and hope. Using familiar materials, I seek to spark subversive optimism, creating questions regarding the unexpected pleasures and deep frustrations of our contemporary psycho-socio-political world. I continue to question the dominant patterns of living, and find help and joy in posing my question through objects found in everyday life, in everyday homes.