The frightful realism of this statuette evidently makes people uncomfortable; all its ideas of sculpture, on those cold, inanimate white objects, on those memorable imitations copied over and over since centuries, are upset.
—J.K. Huysmans, 1881

The Degas Series began with my own sculptural version of Degas most famous sculpture, the little fourteen year-old ballerina. After making my copy in clay (at about 2/3 scale), I cast it in latex rubber to invoke the doll-like aspect of Degas’ original, which was made of flesh-colored wax and adorned with an actual dress and shoes. In fact Degas had several dolls or puppets made for him that he photographed. My version of the dancer was shot in a series of table-top, photo set-ups in an effort to re-examine and re-experience Degas’ own meditation/obsession with working class women and girls and family life in Europe at the end of the 19th Century.