About The Other Toy Story

The Other Toy Story Project
The Other Toy Story is a multi-faceted art project investigating the impact and influence of toys on our social, psychological, and physical environment—especially, what do we do with them when we’re done playing with them? The project was originally conceived by artist Joyce Dallal as part of a residency at the Marlborough School in Los Angeles spanning the 2010-11 school year that resulted in a gallery exhibition featuring Dallal’s sculpture Receptacle alongside artwork created by the students.

Receptacle, essentially a 10 foot tall trash can in the shape of a baby doll, is designed to hold several hundred pounds of used and broken toys that are too thrashed to be donated and contain materials that cannot be recycled. It will continue to be exhibited in temporary exhibitions until it finds a permanent home.

The concept grew out of the consternation felt by the artist upon cleaning out several years worth of toys from her son’s room, and wondering what to do with it all. So many of the toys were missing pieces or broken, that donating them was not a good option and it was hard to know what was recyclable and what wasn’t. The thought of throwing them in the trash was hard to stomach knowing that there is already a floating island of plastic in the ocean the size of Texas, and not wanting to contribute to putting more discarded plastic in the world. So, the artist carted them off to her studio until a time when she could think of something to do with them.

Pondering the toys that came out of her son’s room gave rise to several questions that began the original investigation, which was open to all the classes at the school to participate in. The results of the students’ research and work are displayed on this blog.