After seeing the works in person, my perspective on your works have changed. The figures are a lot smaller in person—how on earth did you get clothes this small?
On the “Still Life (Pieta)” (2007) is an altered jack we found, but everything on the sculpture is made. You can’t just get a dress off the rack, and it would take years to look around for clothes this tiny, with the right kind of color and fabric.
And who is this “we” that you speak of?
My mother. She’s a dress maker, and the only person that I have ever met that is as fastidious and as particular as I am. So for “Woman and Child” (2010), I gave her my design, the fabric, and a foam body that she could put the pins into. Usually, a version is made to be tested on the mock-up, because these are all hard bodies that we can’t manipulate to fit clothing onto, as the sculptures are oddly positioned. But my mother is an expert. She’s the best.
Before you “became” an artist, you were a commercial sculptor in the film industry. How and when did the transition come about?
I started out as an illustrator when I was quite young, but went into advertising and making models for TV ads. The transition into film came naturally. The film industry was great fun, but there was always someone else who molded and painted the form that I made. It wasn’t artistically satisfying, so I kept making my own artwork, and showed them when given the opportunity.
I saw a clip where you were inserting the hair strands into the silicon,...
