Mel Jelacic

From my Beloved Series - "Love is an investment that goes beyond ease and aesthetics. " This is my Velveteen Rabbit which happens to be a stuffed animal shaped like a lamb. I spent 50 cents and rescued my beloved from a thrift store 20 years ago while looking for stuffed animals as props for a photoshoot. I was a young adult at this point, living in NYC, not a time to be investing in stuffed animals but his ironic personality intrigued me. It was comically aloof and angry for a baby’s toy. He looked like he needed love. He quickly went from a prop to my bed fellow. To others he may look like a dirty stuffed animal but to me he looks like a well worn companion.

A lock of Mennonite hair. From my Beloved Series - "Love is an investment that goes beyond ease and aesthetics." These sculptures are portraits of people’s “Velveteen Rabbit.” This series celebrates the symbolic, sentimental value of objects that have no other worth. It explores the ties between people and the material world, the transference of memory and emotions onto objects and the comfort they provide. For our love of this world goes beyond what has a beating heart. “Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.” – The Velveteen Rabbit

A ratty giraffe stuffed animal, from theBeloved Series - Love is an investment that goes beyond ease and aesthetics. These sculptures are portraits of people’s “Velveteen Rabbit.” Raffy is my niece's stuffed animal. This series celebrates the symbolic, sentimental value of objects that have no other worth. It explores the ties between people and the material world, the transference of memory and emotions onto objects and the comfort they provide. For our love of this world goes beyond what has a beating heart. “Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.” – The Velveteen Rabbit

Kelsey's Bunny is from my Beloved Series - "Love is an investment that goes beyond ease and aesthetics." These sculptures are portraits of people’s “Velveteen Rabbit.” This series celebrates the symbolic, sentimental value of objects that have no other worth. It explores the ties between people and the material world, the transference of memory and emotions onto objects and the comfort they provide. For our love of this world goes beyond what has a beating heart. “Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.” – The Velveteen Rabbit

Zippy is my friend Larry’s stuffed animal from my Beloved series - "Love is an investment that goes beyond ease and aesthetics." These sculptures are portraits of people’s “Velveteen Rabbit.” This series celebrates the symbolic, sentimental value of objects that have no other worth. It explores the ties between people and the material world, the transference of memory and emotions onto objects and the comfort they provide. For our love of this world goes beyond what has a beating heart. Here is his own words about Zippy: I may have been the wrong generation to have a velveteen rabbit but what I did have, and STILL have by some miracle or happenstance is my original Zippy the Chimpanzee. Zip was given to me when he first appeared on the Howdy Doody Show in 1953. I was just 2 years old but was allowed to watch that new miracle, the TV. The Zippy book was probably the first book I ever read, or was read to – even Bible stories came later on. I can still remember the full color full page photos of Zippy going to school, being dressed in an Indian (Native American) costume with feather headdress, roller skating, sitting on a stool with a dunce cap because he had misbehaved….. With 2 sisters each old enough to want me to get lost, Zip became a beloved playmate whose home was snuggled atop the pillow of my bed. He was tucked in beside me at naptime and every night and I would drag him out to breakfast with me every morning. My mom often used the excuse that “Zippy is all tired out….He needs to take a nap….Maybe you should nap along with him.” I loved him as much as a rough and tumble, unwitting little boy child could love a stuffed animal.