Drawings of Campus Cuties

In these graphite portraits, mass‑produced Campus Cuties—mid‑century, six‑inch figurines marketed as benign co‑eds—are scaled up, slowed down, and made newly strange. The tight croppings, enlarged formats, and meticulous tonal modeling monumentalize what was once disposable kitsch. Soft gradations of graphite mimic stone more than plastic, granting the figures a classical, almost funerary gravity. Their half‑lidded eyes, pursed mouths, and fixed gestures read less as flirtation than as fatigue, complicity, or resistance; the ambiguity is the point. By lingering on every seam, curl, and surface blemish, the drawings expose how idealized femininity was fabricated, sold, and naturalized.

Formally, the works hinge on friction: between smooth, polished passages and visibly worked textures; between elegant contour and the awkwardness of frozen, mannequin poses; between the intimate medium of drawing and the cold anonymity of mass production. The shift from glossy plastic to graphite’s slow, haptic mark renders these figures vulnerable and perceptive, as if the act of looking hard enough could restore an inner life to objects designed to flatten it. Occasional framing details—pinholes, page edges, flashes of gilded border—reinscribe authorship and value, recasting trinkets as reliquaries.

Conceptually, the series extends an inquiry into privilege, power, and proximity to power. These bodies were scripted to perform a narrow, marketable femininity; enlarging them turns the lens back on the ideological machinery that produced them. The drawings operate like evidence and elegy at once: evidence of how representation circulates through culture, and elegy for subjectivities constrained by it. By hybridizing art history, pop culture, feminist theory, and personal perspective, the work unsettles nostalgia and recodes the figurines as critical agents—objects that now look back.

Rives BFK paper, graphite, gold leaf. 2016-ongoing.