Bratz dolls don’t actually smash each other on the head with a shiny gold cross or fly over Chicago on a purple magic carpet wearing a matching skirt.  Barbie dolls don’t actually shop at Nordstrom.  But in Western graduate student John Sloan’s photography, they do.

Sloan opened his first solo exhibition, “Tainted Dream,” May 1 at Shift Collaborative Studio in Seattle.  The exhibition, which runs through May 31, features images of Barbie and Bratz dolls in poses ranging from doing their hair in a mirror to headless mirror images of the dolls against a swirling pink background.  The series is an exploration of the manufactured culture of stereotypes and desire found in children’s toys.

Though his work often appears to send a particular message to his audience, Sloan said he does not want to be a preacher of any particular subject matter and tries to inject his work with humor whenever possible.

Sloan said he likes photography because a concept can go from being an initial idea to a working piece of art in one day.  Sloan said he hopes people will see his work and laugh but also discuss and ask questions about not only the work itself, but the references he puts in his work.

“There are a lot of ways in which photography can capture people’s attention and also fool them in ways that painting can’t,” Sloan said.

Sloan is currently showing his work at two exhibitions, one at the Manifest Studio in Cincinnati and his show at Shift Collaborative in downtown Seattle.  Sloan’s work will also be featured in a third exhibition at the Mindport Exhibits in Bellingham beginning May 14.

Sloan was working toward a Bachelor of Arts degree with a specialty in painting and drawing when he went to the Beyond Boarders International Art Competition in the Viking Union Gallery in 2005.  He said he saw work that challenged what he had previously thought about photography.  Sloan then decided to take photography classes and graduated in 2007 with a bachelor’s degree in studio art, concentrating in photography.

Sloan is one of three Western students this year working toward completing his Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) degree in spring quarter.  In order to apply to the BFA program, a student must first complete a Bachelor of Arts degree.  Then, after working mostly independently for an additional year to create a body of work, the student must show work in an exhibition and pass an evaluation by a panel of faculty members to earn the degree.

Sloan, along with the other BFA candidates, Hsiu-Ching Lin and Chelsea Von Stubbe, will be showing his work in a local exhibition called “Byproducts” at the Mindport Exhibits on West Holly Street May 14-31.  

Von Stubbe said she met Sloan in an art class they shared during winter quarter of 2007.  She said she finds Sloan’s work interesting because he is a man taking pictures of toys traditionally thought to be for girls.  

In his artist’s statement for the exhibit, Sloan said his interest in photographing Barbie and Bratz dolls began after he learned two of his close friends struggled with eating disorders when they were younger.  One of the friends shared with him that she would stare at herself in the mirror and compare her body to that of her Barbie doll.  

Sloan has two young daughters and said when he went home after learning of his friends’ struggles with body image, he threw his older daughter’s Barbie doll in the trash.  

Since then, Sloan has been working on images of Barbie and Bratz dolls and his work has been shown in nearly 20 exhibitions.  

He has received six awards and honors, including a Best of Subject award and two honorable mentions from the City of Bellingham for their Essence of Bellingham photo competition in June 2006.  

Creative Quarterly, a journal of art and design aimed at showcasing college students’ work, featured Sloan’s work on the cover of its winter 2008 issue.

In December 2007 Sloan traveled to New York City to attend an award ceremony after he was named one of the student winners of American Photo’s Image of the Year Competition.  Sloan said the award is the most prestigious recognition he has received thus far.  

Sloan said he attributes much of his success in showing at exhibitions to his photography professor, Garth Amundson.  

“He is an exceptional instructor,” Sloan said.  “I feel that his concentration on teaching both the technical as well as the conceptual aspects of photography has really been a key to my success to being in these exhibits.”

Amundson said Sloan began taking black and white pictures of the dolls several years ago and has since pushed his ideas to develop into the work he has today. He said a lot of Sloan’s success is due to his dedication to his work and to his superior technical skills.

Amundson is a member of the Shift Collaborative Studio and was one of the four people who made the decision to accept Sloan’s work into the studio.  The experience of having artwork exhibited in a large city, such as Seattle, is beneficial because many people have the opportunity to see it, Amundson said.  

Sloan said he always carries his sketchbook with him because the concepts and ideas he uses in his work will sometimes come to him as random thoughts or in a dream.

Other times he deliberately sits down to think about what he wants his work to look like.  Sloan said he has so many ideas it is sometimes hard to choose which to pursue and to know which will come across best in a photograph.

Most of the time his work starts as something he wants to make for himself, not something he is making for commercial reasons, he said.

“A lot of this is not a message that I want to give to other people, but it starts out as a question that I’m asking of myself,” Sloan said.  

Sloan said he has achieved many of his professional goals as an artist this year, something he once thought wouldn’t occur until years down the road. 

He is now re-evaluating his goals and thinking about how he can change his art, he said.

He has seen the dreams of fellow artists change after they graduate and find it difficult to pay for production of their work.  Sloan said he hopes to avoid this by considering photography's commercial aspect, which he had not considered before.

“I’ve been doing the same series for about three years,” Sloan said.  “ I think [my art] either needs to make a major evolutionary change, or I need to move on to something else.”

Share this article:
                                   

Be first to comment on this article

Only registered users can post comments.
Please login or register.