1. The doll aisle at Hobby Lobby is extremely unsettling – doll arms in plastic bags, doll heads without eyes, packets of doll hair, etc.
2. You never know where an idea will lead you. I went to Hobby Lobby with the goal of finding a plastic doll I could pierce repeatedly with an ice pick so that she would radiate beams of blue light when a small blue light bulb was placed inside her .
3. If you collect random interesting stuff, and then re-arrange the stuff, eventually something will declare itself. When I got home, I unwrapped the new doll and put her on my desk — where I thought she would spend a few days until I could find an ice pick — but over the next several days, as part of this continual re-arrangement of stuff that happens, a roll of twine ended up next to her, suggesting another idea.
4. Sharing art and hearing about other people’s art projects is inspiring. My friend Tim has been planning a photo shoot involving people hanging upside down holding water balloons. His idea was to take the photograph while the people and the water balloons they're holding are hanging straight down, then turn the photograph upside down in Photoshop so that the balloons would appear to be floating. Binding the doll’s legs with twine reminded me of Tim’s project, and I decided to do my own version, substituting a doll for a person and long doll hair for water balloons.
5. Perhaps it was the word cocoon that had been planted in my brain by the latest episode of Project Runway, but what started out as a way to bind the doll’s feet together merely to hang her from the ceiling became instead a kind of cocoon the more I wrapped twine around her feet. When the twine-cocoon was at leg-warmers height, I stopped wrapping.
6. Melting the end of a length of frayed twine with a match so that it becomes a small hard black knob reminds me of camping with the Girl Scouts.
7. As I was figuring out how to best style the doll’s hair – loose and frizzy or swept back into a slick ponytail tied with a black twist tie – it dawned on me that this project was without a doubt the gayest thing I have ever done, and I have done some pretty gay things.
8. Gravity is always working, so if a doll is left hanging upside down, her hair will always be falling down.
9. Even though a doll is much smaller than a person, and not-quite-humanly proportioned, when you look at a doll, it’s a lot like looking at a human, and so when you look at a doll hanging upside down, it’s a lot like looking at a human hanging upside down.
10. Unlike a human, a doll can hang upside down forever. Blood will never rush to her head. And a doll will never catch a chill, even if she’s dressed only in lace panties and twine leg-warmers.