Stella Marrs’s Barbie Stories
Last week was the Flow Conference, which I did some graphics and organizational work for. I also co-moderated a panel on the role of video game studies in the academy, convened by Judd Ruggill and Ken McAllister, co-directors of the Learning Games Initiative.
In addition to the rousing discussion sparked at that roundtable and at the others I attended, I also had the exciting opportunity to meet Stella Marrs, who I gave a ride to the Thursday night screening and whose artwork I’ve followed for most of the last decade. Marrs was part of the scene in Olympia in the 1980s, and her work remains funny and relevant as ever. Currently, she is at work on an MFA and is collecting Barbie stories at Girl City (feel free to contact her via the site if you’re interested in contributing).
I’ve always loved the way that Marrs flirts with popular culture, making the familiar images available through magazines and advertisements into something that manages to be playful while offering incisive commentary. It was a pleasure to meet Marrs, and I’m interested to see where her new work goes. If you’d like to read more about Marrs and her art projects, there’s an excellent interview available on her site. And, heck, go buy some of her postcards and such — you’ll be supporting a very genuinely nice person whose spent a lot of time fighting the good fight.
[Image from Stella Marrs’s web site, where you can look at lots more.]