Laurie’s Ballet

Porcelain dolls, miniature houses, ballet slippers, sharply-lit stage against mysterious darkness, an abyss into one’s mind (or of one’s mind?), glistening snowflakes and iridescent rose petals, swooning whirls of tutus, Alice’s beautiful skirts and her Wonderland, a dream within a dream, an invitation to a dance—eerie yet bizarrely irresistible, that dulcet and melodious danger.

Curtains up for Laurie’s ballet.

Room Underneath (Red), 1998

Room Underneath (Gold), 1998

Room Underneath (Standing), 1998

House Underneath (Reclining), 1998

Slow Dance, film still, 2007

Pink Ballerina (Vera Ellen), 1982

Untitled (Eye to Eye), 1983

Painted Ballet (Les Sylphides), 1983

Waltz of the Snowflakes, 1983

Ballet Stage, 1983

Laurie Simmons was born on Long Island, New York, in 1949. She received a BFA from the Tyler School of Art, Philadelphia (1971). Simmons stages photographs and films with paper dolls, finger puppets, ventriloquist dummies, and costumed dancers as “living objects,” animating a dollhouse world suffused with nostalgia and colored by an adult’s memories, longings, and regrets. Simmons’s work blends psychological, political and conceptual approaches to art making, transforming photography’s propensity to objectify people, especially women, into a sustained critique of the medium. Mining childhood memories and media constructions of gender roles, her photographs are charged with an eerie, dreamlike quality. On first glance her works often appear whimsical, but there is a disquieting aspect to Simmons’s child’s play as her characters struggle over identity in an environment in which the value placed on consumption, designer objects, and domestic space is inflated to absurd proportions. Simmons’s first film, “The Music of Regret” (2006), extends her photographic practice to performance, incorporating musicians, professional puppeteers, Alvin Ailey dancers, Hollywood cinematographer Ed Lachman, and actress Meryl Streep. She has received many awards, including the Roy Lichtenstein Residency in the Visual Arts at the American Academy in Rome (2005); and fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation (1997) and the National Endowment for the Arts (1984). She has had major exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (2006); Baltimore Museum of Art (1997); San Jose Museum of Art, California (1990); Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (1987); and has participated in two Whitney Biennials (1985, 1991). Simmons lives and works in New York.

(*Biography information taken from Art:21.)




Slow Dance from Laurie Simmons Studio on Vimeo.
Slow Dance. 2007. USA.
35mm film (transferred to HD CAM). 4:28 min.
Directed by Laurie Simmons
Cinematography by Ed Lachman ASC
Music by Michael Rohatyn
Lyrics by Laurie Simmons



P.s. I have not written a “proper” blog entry for a while (that is, one with a fair amount of blabbering on my part), but when I encounter works by artists such as Laurie Simmons, words seem unnecessary. There is however another article which is incubating in my head at the moment, and will hopefully be my next post.