The 4-inch-tall vinyl doll with the aquarium for a head contains two chubby, bug-eyed puffer fish floating in shellac sea. In one corner of the tank is a tiny wire and nylon fishing net. Below the neck, the doll resembles a Japanese chef. One hand grasps a fillet knife.
Parkville artists Jim Lasher and Ayumi Yasuda are trying to replicate a typical puffer fish restaurant in miniature, so a second vinyl doll has been transformed into a beer vending machine. Inside the case are cans about the size of a shirt button, adorned with the labels of common Asian brands.
Clearly, the roughly three dozen art toys that will be exhibited at Vinylmore 4 in Hampden starting Friday aren't your daughter's Barbies and Kens.
"In the United States, we tend to think of toys as mass-produced, inexpensive items for kids," says Benn Ray, the owner of Atomic Books, where the show is being held. All the pieces were crafted by local artists.
"Often, the dolls or action figures are made to resemble licensed characters from comic books, television cartoons or the movies," he says.
"But in Asia, where art toys originated, it's not necessarily a childish pursuit. They're typically created by artists, produced in limited editions, sold in punk-rock fashion boutiques and bought by collectors. The level of detail is so high that you'd never give them to kids to play with."
A selection of pieces from last year's Vinylmore 3 on display in Atomic Books are marvels of ingenuity. And, just like any other work of art, they communicate a fresh point of view. In one piece created by Peter Chang, the doll's head has been sliced off at ear level, and an ominous-looking tank painted military green takes up the space that ordinarily would be occupied by the brain.
Another figure called "Velvis" is encased in a box filled with a dark fabric with a thick, soft pile. For those familiar with Baltimore's art scene, the black velvet is the signature of the painter Tony Shore. Elvis' head has been rendered in profile all along the doll's vinyl body, with the singer's chin ending just above the doll's knees.
Even the puffer fish restaurant isn't merely whimsical. Though puffers naturally are comical in appearance ,with tiny mouths that appear to be smiling, the fish contain a toxin that is many times more deadly than cyanide and for which there is no known antidote. Diners who gobble up a puffer entrée — known as "fugu" — literally are placing their lives in the hands of the chef who attempts to cut away the poisonous parts of the meat.
The two pieces by Lasher and Yasuda are humorous, to be sure. But they're also an implicit commentary on human appetites and the price we're willing to pay to indulge them.
"I've eaten puffer fish," Lasher says. "They're delicious. But when your next meal could be your last one, you do think twice."
Art toys for adults, sometimes called "urban vinyl," date to the late 1990s in Hong Kong, where a designer named Michael Lau sculpted a three-dimensional figure and photographed it for an album cover. Soon, vinyl figures began popping up in Asian art galleries and clothing boutiques.
The pieces were originals instead of copies of familiar characters, and they had a contemporary, cutting-edge feel. Even today, if a store catering to art toys has an oversized red G.I. Joe for sale — as Atomic Books does — the iconic soldier doll is preparing to launch a rubber chicken, not a hand grenade.
Art toys combined the intellectual heft of paintings and sculptures with the playfulness of toys. They caught on big in Japan, where their diminutive size made them ideal for a heavily populated island nation with limited living space. Some are priced at more than $1,000.
Manufacturers also began selling blank white vinyl figures called "dunnys", "munnys" or "labbits" for about $10 apiece. The figures function like empty canvasses and are meant to be custom-designed by the purchaser.
Artist Sara Tomko says the impetus to replicate the world in miniature has been around for centuries.
In her view, a young art school graduate with purple-streaked hair who labors to build a stamp-sized Chinese carryout container is kin to the senior citizen who constructs, stains and upholsters a Chippendale chair for a dollhouse.
"Ever since I was a little kid, I loved playing with tiny toys," Tomko says. "I made my own dollhouse furniture and my own doll food. The outside world is big and scary. The appeal of creating a miniature world is that you control it. You can escape."
Tomko has been a John Waters fan for as long as she can remember, so she is creating a figure for Vinylmore 4 modeled on the late Divine. The dunny will wear a copy of the red fishtail dress that that Divine wore in "Pink Flamingos" and will have Divine's flamboyant blue and white glitter eye makeup and mane of golden curls.
"I discovered that I needed a more feminine shape, so I actually had to build a new body for her on top of the dunny," Tomko says. "I'm still working on the arms."
It may be that the same impulse that drove the 14th-century Flemish genius, Jan van Eyck, to paint every bead on the Virgin Mary's robe individually is the same urge that induces contemporary toy artists to draw each line on a tattoo just 1 centimeter square.
"One of the things that intrigues me about miniatures is that it lets you control your audience," Lasher says. "When a piece is this small and this detailed, you've got to come close to really see it. You either pick it up, or you bend down to bring it to eye level."
Baltimore is one of the few cities in the U.S., along with New York, Chicago. Los Angeles and San Francisco, to have an annual exhibition of the urban vinyl toys.
The artists creating pieces for the show are drawn from fields as diverse as sculpture, illustration, street art and furniture design. For Ray, an important benefit of Vinylmore is that it forces his exhibitors out of their comfort zones.
"The fun is seeing artists who have no idea how to do this applying their work to the vinyl form," he says.
"Most of the artists in the show create primarily two-dimensional artworks, and they have to figure out how to deal with a three-dimensional form. For example, oil paints don't work very well because vinyl is petroleum-based."
The husband-and-wife team of Lasher and Yasuda, who received last year's best-in-show award, have two young daughters. They have day jobs as graphic artists and create their own artwork in their spare time. Nonetheless, they are willing to set aside three weeks each year to make two new pieces for Vinylmore.
Yasuda is the primary sculptor, while Lasher paints the pieces, and he says they are exhilarated by the technical challenges posed by each year's project.
At the moment, the couple are wrestling with the beer vending machine. Cutting the slot where the cans come out wasn't particularly difficult, but molding a sliver of Plexiglas into a curved shape to serve as the protective lip was.
It took several false starts, but the artists persevered.
Lasher explains: "We want the end result to be freaking real-looking."
To his own surprise, the pieces that Lasher has done for Vinylmore are inspiring him to embark in a new direction in his own paintings. In the past, he has preferred to work on large canvasses. But he's about to begin a series of paintings that are each the size of a business card.
"When you're painting on that small a scale, you have to decide which things to leave out," he says. "You have to paint one line instead of six, and you have to decide which one is going to convey the image you want.
"It's weird, because I thought my art would inform the pieces I created for Vinylmore, and not the other way around. I hadn't expected the show to push me back."
If you go
Vinylmore 4 starts Friday and continues through May 1 at Atomic Books, 3620 Falls Road. An opening reception will be held at 7:30 p.m. Friday. Free. Call 410-662-4444 or go to atomicbooks.com.