July 5, 2007

Inside Out Teddy Bears?

I recently subscribed to a blog called Boing Boing: A Directory of Wonderful Things and saw a post on Inside Out Teddy Bears.  How interesting.  As stated below, I agree that people will tend to feel more empathy for these creatures than feel comforted by them.  I wonder if Build-A-Bear workshop will start offering the option to create these inside out stuffed animals?  See below for the entire post: 

Here’s an interview with artist Kent Rogowski, about his “Bears” photographs. Furry, huggable teddybears, gutted and inverted. 

Q: I love these bears so much. They remind me of my early sewing experiments. What happens when you take such a beloved and iconic toy and transform it by literally turning it inside out?

A: (…) Teddy bears are designed to be innocuous and non-threatening creatures. Inside-out the bears are still sometimes recognizable but are now much more complicated and contradictory. The seams of the bear now look like scars, and some bears lose their limbs and other appendages depending on how they were constructed. When you look at the inside-out bears they appear to have a history or a past. They no longer offer comfort but instead seem to want our empathy.

These are phenomenal. I think this one’s my favorite — the poor li’l guy looks like he’s all tubed in to a catheter or an oxygen tank. Link to interview by Nicole Pasulka at The Morning News, here’s the gallery show in NYC through August 10, and here’s an Amazon Link to buy the book (thanks Rosecrans!).