altered plushies

when i was a kid everybody had a hundred stuffed animals. i don't know where they came from. i know many of them ended up going at yardsales. if they were donated to thrift stores, they sold out long ago, i only see a few at a time now. perhaps some have kept their hoards, surely some collections were tossed at the thought of dust and mites and bacteria taking up residence in them. do you know the best way to clean an old plushie? i read to spritz it with diluted vodka and put it in the sun. i tend to mist my shit in vinegar regularly, and my body. anti-septic, anti-fungal etc etc. anyway, i hope some of the old stuffies survived, because i strongly desire to cut them up and piece them back together in bizarre fashions. i don't reckon i could sell these creations, not unless i build some skill. most of what i do is messy at best. some of them might make nice gifts or add interest to a photo shoot. i imagine accumulating the creatures inside my car, then i can have an art car without sloshing a speck of paint on it.

so i set out to alter this bear today. it turned out much different than i imagined, cuter. it started out as a hideous thing, brown with a printed xmass pattern shirt, not a removable shirt, same fabric as the rest of the bear but shirt shaped and the rest brown w/little dots. i imagined making it into a painting of uncomfortable things, the irony of it being painted on a teddy bear, the irony of the teddy bear conceived when mother fucking teddy roosevelt caught a bear in a bear trap, who was shot a few times and didn't die, then teddy took pity on him, let him live, and decided to make these little toys to commemorate him, advertise what a great man he was yadda yadda yadda. so i thought of sharp things, spikes, teeth, but when i started painting over the bear, realizing how much damn paint it would take just to do a background, and took an easier route. in my practice, i have always tried to get the most striking effects from the least amount of effort. reconstruct the t-shirt to fit the bear? nah, roll up the sleeves, tie a knot in the back, hey this baby needed a tail anyhow. that scarf i picked up at a little arts and crafts fair. that was a weird product, it was rolled up in a circle with a wrapper and ribbon and a dowel stick, so it would look like a fuzzy acid pop lolly. i guess that's why i was attracted to it, but why the hell did i buy it? i think i was tipsy and it wasn't expensive. but that thing rolled around from one place to the next, stuffed in a bag or a trunk, unopened till now. so many objects i have like that, and i need to start making found/altered/fucked up art every day so i don't asphyxiate on potential art materials.

well here's the bear. i have a few more plushies i've made, i'll post all these creations in this thread.