2008
plastic baby doll,  36″ X 36″ cloth blanket, felt, yarn, “Flip and Learn” game, toy truck, cassette recorder, acrylic paint

Gender specific toys are here coated with a sickly, almost sallow green acrylic paint. This same acrylic paint is applied to an infant’s play mat and cassette recorder which plays a cassette from the artist’s childhood. The application of paint is in attempt to “neutralize” the space for those viewers who want to, as the words stitched to the bottom read, “sit” and “play.” The minimal and awkward play space available is representation of the often awkward, uncomfortable transition out of childhood into adulthood where the proverbial “playing field” is said to be neutral for men and women. As viewers engaged with the toy game “Flip and Learn” placed centrally on the play mat (now modified by the artist to be the “Adult” version) they are confronted with a new set of referential realities belonging to adulthood, interspersed between the game’s original child-friendly ones. Viewers press their finger to a red tab below a letter, colour, number set, etc., where the tab flips up to reveal the artist’s comic-like drawing adult adaptations.