About Zono Eco-Art Toys, a.k.a. "Wall Dolls"

I'm the type that shops at second-hand stores and picks up stray debris as he walks down the sidewalk. I've even been known to dumpster dive. These odds and ends are then filed into bins of like material, shape and/or genre.

I've taken occasional heat from friends and family about my collections. But, while other wannabe artists go broke trying to afford expensive art materials, I never run out of supplies. And business men take note: my overhead for these Zono Eco-Art Toy pieces is low!

It's my belief that I will someday be vindicated! That this consumer society, if it is to survive, will have to learn to reclaim and reuse. Waste not, want not, squandering splurgers!

It is to other curators of castoffs that this series of handmade, one-of-a-kind, seriously fun, Zono Eco-Art Toys is dedicated!

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The Historical Significance of Fetish Figures

Fetish figures (a condescending European term) have played an important part in the lives of many of the Earth's peoples. What differs these Zono Eco-Art figures from their predecessors is the environment in which they were created:

My figures share the same principle material as many other fetish figures - wood. But these modern-incarnations-of-an-ancient-idea use, rather than trunks and limbs, found lumber - cast-offs from a wasteful society that is quickly depleting forests. And rather than other natural materials used by past fetish figure creators, my secondary materials reflect our consumer society: used clothing, second hand jewelry, broken toys, etc.

My intent is primarily the same: the bringing about of "magic:" a channeling of the energies that surround us and move through us. The energy is now filtered through and so reflects the environment and culture which produced the materials: TV and comic book heroes, action figure toys or puppets, fashion and fine art may come to mind while viewing them. Also represented are supernatural personifications from many of the world's religions and folklore, rather than a single, tribal pantheon - expressing an increased world view.

My intent is to take items that have lost their place in the natural order of things, and reinstate their rightness through a process that reaches deep into the traditions of man's relationship to the energies of nature.

Pretty deep for "toys," huh?