THE PORTENTOUS DOLL PROTECTORS !
In August 2025 I suffered an acute stroke in the left lobe of my brain. After weeks in hospitals and rehab, I returned home to cats, life, and my art studio. I began in earnest working on rebuilding physical habits like cooking, household chores, and a lot of the things I do and make in the studio. I was, however, very intimidated by painting. Working in oil on canvas has been a through line over the past 25 years of my life, and I was scared that if I tried it after the stroke and I didn’t have the facility I had before, I’d be overwhelmed by grief and loss. SPOILERS: eventually I began oil painting again, and it’s going wonderfully.
But meanwhile I had an idea: I had been picking up McDonald’s Barbie figurines from the 1990s now and then on visits to Toy de Jour and to flea markets, garage sales, etc. I’d been doing this as a kind of wish fulfillment, immersing myself in a kind of pop cultural femininity that was super duper regulated, prohibited, and policed in my very conservative, religious upbringing. But returning to the studio after the hospitals, I felt there was potential for using them as surfaces for painting. They weren’t canvas, weren’t rectangles, weren’t for hanging on walls—I pulled out Flashe, a really seductive, matte finish vinyl paint and began experimenting with painting these little plastic dollies.
I worked intuitively, patiently with the wavers, jerks, and inconsistencies in how I could handle brushes. Gradually I started to paint masks, glowing eyes, references to Silver Age comic costumes, to fashion designs from the Bauhaus and Wiener Werkstatte, and to motifs in abstract paintings by folx like Lily Van Der Stokker, Judy Ledgerwood, Mai-Thu Perrret, and Sonia Delaunay.
I started to see the painted dolls as vigilantes of a discrepant, intersectional feminism that is central to my value systems.
I positioned them as super villainesses, monstresses, and talismans for mythic beings.
Because I didn’t have a lot of direct interactions with dolls as a kid, I have a pretty strong aversion to synthetic hair as a material and texture.
One day I cut off the hair of any of the figures that weren’t entirely molded plastic, and I started making these Medusa gorgon ‘helmets’ out of polymer clay—the rolling and coiling made my Occupational Therapist very happy to see.
What’s resulted is a group of dozens of these masked, super-shero dollies that I came to associate with the popularized slogan ‘PROTECT THE DOLLS’ in defense of the validity of transgender women vis-a-vis a suppressive political system. I’ve come to call this set of painted figures THE PORTENTOUS DOLL PROTECTORS, and started to envision a way to put them out into the world.
This is where y’all come in: I want to humbly, earnestly, passionately propose a pop-up exhibition of some of these figures at Toy de Jour.
Exhibitions you’ve all organized like the Nuggets, Simpsons, Muppets, and Taco Bell shows have been really important to Eric and me both; we’ve been growing more disillusioned with snooty zones of the ‘high art world,’ and been drawing a sense of refuge and support from the kinds of culture and community that you build in and around Toy de Jour.
And I LOVE the idea of these dollies returning to a primary site where I re-encountered them and brought them into my home and studio.
This is the idea I have:
–we would create a display in the exhibition space in the shop. My other partner André worked in a plastics fabrication studio, so I think we could figure out clever shelves that interact with the space.
–proceeds from the sales of the painted figures would be split 4 ways:
25% to y’all
25% to Brave Space Alliance, a non-profit on Chicago’s southside that supports BIPOC trans women and queer people with gender affirming care, political representation, educational programming, and outreach: https://www.bravespacealliance.org/
25% to the Chicago Abortion Fund, which is an organization I’ve donated to as much as possible for years: https://www.chicagoabortionfund.org/
and 25% to me
–I have a fantasy of each doll being priced sliding scale, $100–400, based on what people feel they can afford to donate and support these organizations.
IF this is something you’d want to work on together, does that seem logistically feasible? Or is it much easier to just price things at single, specific numbers?
I’m curious to see what you think of all this.
And I want to emphasize that there’s NO PRESSURE for you to commit to any of this. I adore you and what you do, and I’ll keep on adoring even if this project idea isn’t a good fit for whatever reasons. I think this is an exhibition that could happen in a lot of different places and ways; Toy de Jour is my first thought because of how personally meaningful it could be.
So mull this over, No rush, no pressure.
Happy to field any questions or talk through any parts as you’d want to.
THANK YOU for taking the time to look through this and consider.
And THANK YOU for being such a haven for me and so many other folx.
With care,
matt morris
225 445 3430
mme.mattmorris@gmail.com
