Hobo The Hugger

Self-produced art toys are designer collectibles created and manufactured independently by the artist or small teams without the backing of a large toy company or mass-market brand. These toys are often highly personal, artistic expressions and are usually made in limited runs. Key Characteristics include independent creation where the artist is in control of the entire process from concept, sculpting, and painting to production and packaging. These are usually made in small batches, often 10–100 pieces, which adds to their rarity, made using materials like resin, sofubi (Japanese soft vinyl), or 3D-printed components. Art is that thing which talks in circles to speak of existence. The expression of the inexplicable, precarious at best, steps in (or should) when words fall short, activating a language that speaks of intuition, appealing to the depths of the psyche, to our collective consciousness. In this mode, my work intends to serve as a psychoanalysis from the particular to the general and vice versa, based on my perception as a filter that distills reality and its characteristic ambiguity. In this way my work aims to represent the multiple paradoxes of existence by means of visual metaphors: metaphor, the language of our intuition. It is the subconscious which must receive this message. These images, these representations—visual, in this case—aspire to be vehicles in which to lose oneself in contemplation for a few moments; to meditate and engage in dialogue with ourselves, review our conventionalisms, analyze ourselves as individuals, analyze the contradictions of our nature by detaching ourselves from our "I" and its prejudices; and to gaze toward the horizon of the ideal, toward the edge of the quotidian, into the changing current of the river through which we navigate. Each work thus affirms a small aspect of the human condition, bearing