The Dolls of “J”

This exhibition is presented as part of Chicago Artists Month – 2009. This year’s event has been dubbed “2.0” as a reference to a second generation. No hard copy booklet will exist. Instead, events are calendared online with an emphasis on utilizing technology for access and exchange of ideas as well as interactivity of the art itself.

We can think of nothing more interactive than dolls and puppets! This exhibition presents the very tactile art of Chicago’s Joyce Owens, JoJo Baby and Joe Mazza as well as some of the J’s friends. These amazing dolls are both personable and highly personalized reflecting each artist’s psyche.

Joyce Owens is exhibited and collected internationally. A Chicago-based artist who earned a M.F.A. from Yale, Owens has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions. Owens, who is a professor at Chicago State University, is also sought out as a curator, consultant and writer.  Primarily a painter, Owens constructed sculptures that were inspired by a sociological study first carried out by Dr. Kenneth Clark in 1947 that produced astonishing results: When given a choice, black children preferred the white doll over the black doll.  The test was recreated with surprisingly similar results in 2006.  The white doll was “the pretty doll, the good doll, the nice doll,” according to the pre-school children. "I created the "Girl Like Me" sculptures,” Owens said, “because I was appalled that the results were so similar in 2006 when I would have thought things had changed!"  Her nearly life-size figures speak volumes by confronting the beauty ideals that we are still doggedly embraced in the 21st Century.

JoJo Baby is one of Chicago’s most visual and visible art personalities who is already a figurehead in Chicago’s nightclub scene. He learned his doll-making craft as the only student of the late Greer Lankton, who was part of the Andy Warhol Factory. Jojo Baby’s intricately crafted dolls humor some, startle others and amaze all.

Joe Mazza is an award winning playwright, actor and puppeteer extraordinaire. Having been around Joe on a number of occasions, I feel he is best described as having an irrepressible energy that borders on seismic.  Some of Joe's creatures are quite diminutive but possess personality enough to fill the house!