Introducing Bethany Jean Fancher
It is not often enough that I encounter works of art that can be so thoroughly and equally enjoyed by child and adult alike. Fancher's photographs capture a universal love of animals and their special place in our childhood imaginations. Posing a spirited cast of plastic horses in tableaus both "real" and imagined, Fancher playfully explores both scale and emotion in all sorts of surprising settings.
The horses are captured as participants in real events, such as a street fair, 4th of July fireworks, and even jumping through the historic installation of Christo and Jean Claude's Gates.
They turn up in familiar New York City settings, as well as Wyoming and the Rio Grande ...
...encountering fast-paced action, desire and even a moment of poignant self-reflection.
Sometimes she lets us in on her pranks with scale,
and even brings us back to a fundamental landscape of childhood imagining, playing in our own room.
These 12"x16" editioned prints (some nearly sold out) are available in the $300 range.
I'd like to give one of these to my horse-obsessed god-daughter, a gift to start her art collection and perhaps encourage her to experiment with her own camera! Oh, but which one?
Inquiries? Please contact the artist directly via email.
Copyright © 2008 Apartment Therapy
BREYERS!!!!
i used to collect those when i was a young lass!
how VERY cool!
there's a whole culture built up around collecting, selling/trading, remaking and "clothing" them
i myself was a rather accomplished tack maker for them
you have to have nimble fingers and tons of patience and creativity
there are shows too, both live, and back when i was on the "circuit" photo, where you would mail pictures to a judge and then they'd send back ribbons and photocopied results
man, this is making me wax mega-nostalgic...
$300 for a picture of a plastic horse? I don't think so!
Agreed, $300 for that? no thank you. And I collected those things as a child as well.
Very clever comments, anonymous I and II. How thoughtful and well reasoned.
I quite like these works. They're sweet, but also dark.
I really like the way these images deposit a sense of play into the everyday, reimagining the potential of common spaces and recasting NYC as a free space for ponies to prance instead of a site controlled by commerce.
I think it's also interesting to think of these in terms of the Woman-Horse Dyad....
Very Nice!