Julie Farstad dolls up PLUG Projects’ new Solo Space
Horror flicks have burdened doll images with some unwelcome cultural baggage, but even card-carrying members of the “creeped out” set won’t be able to keep from marveling at Julie Farstad’s Under the Orange Sky. The exhibition is the first booked into PLUG Projects’ new Solo Space, a gallery reserved for Kansas City–area artists, and it’s a showcase of the artist’s technical mastery.
But, yes: dolls. Farstad here places the familiar childhood toys in vibrant fantasy landscapes, drawing religious iconography and medieval “gold ground” paintings into her frame of reference. The invisible brushwork and glaze-smooth finish of her Claybord paintings make you feel as if you’re gazing at a video still of a claymation feature. Her dewy figures have a sculpted aesthetic, with bodies that glisten with a Plasticine sheen. Her palette evokes that sugary childhood favorite, rainbow sherbet, striated like a sunrise.
In some of Farstad’s previous art, she arranged dolls in mischievous poses: peeking under dresses or bending to receive a spank. The figures on display at PLUG’s Solo Space feel more subdued in tone, ready to engage serenely with childhood imagination and innocence. Adding to that effect may be the closed eyes of most of Farstad’s figures, which assume postures of tranquility even when lying on the ground, legs splayed.
Though her paintings aren’t strictly narrative, works such as “In the Forest” convey a strong sense of scene. “Forest” plays out like the prelude to a dark fairy tale, with child dolls hiding in the trees while an adult figure in religious garb stands in the foreground. The grown-up may be praying — or counting as a game of hide-and-seek starts.
It’s a moment pregnant with possibility and, like many of these paintings, it taps into a sense of youthful play. You want to reach into the painting as if it were a diorama, as if you could rearrange the figures and spin new stories for further amusement.
“The Forest Is Gone” is one of two fabric pieces on display, but it, too, recalls childhood comforts in the fabric’s soft, worn look. Collaged pieces of a woman’s dress are frayed around the edges as if from frequent use, and the less saturated colors of the hand-dyed material call to mind domestic crafts or heirloom quilts. The tulle overlay on tree stumps adds a gentle, miragelike shimmer to the scene, and still more figures are suggested through subtle stitching, hidden in gentle thread outlines.
The paintings are bolder in both color and tone, and the interplay among unicorns and Play-Doh castles of childhood and Farstad’s somber signaling toward religious imagery is satisfyingly complex. Adding Swarovski crystals gilds the lily a bit, though. “It Could Have Been So Different” is one of the strongest paintings in the exhibition, but the doll’s halo of crystal appliques threatens to shatter the delicate balance and skew Farstad’s fine-tuned aesthetic toward bedazzled camp.
“It Could Have Been So Different” still grips your attention, nesting its figure in a clump of flowers with blooms like plastic coin purses. These molded, artificial elements make the expressiveness of Farstad’s frozen figures all the more striking. The hollows of the doll’s eyes and demure tilt of the head give the piece a sense of authentic calm, and Farstad’s attention to the way light moves and ripples across the supple, sculpted landscape is exquisite. For all the unicorns and truffula trees in her art, very little about it feels less than sincere.
Dolls may still seem more creepy than kidlike to your imagination when you leave PLUG. There’s something admittedly unsettling, even a little threatening, about this brightly fantastic world. An orange sky feels like an ill omen. But Under the Orange Sky finds a near-spiritual transcendence. Farstad’s off-kilter imagination proves that stillness doesn’t have to be static.
