1. Laurie Simmons

2. Biography Born on Long Island, New York, October 3rd, 1949. Began photographing at the age of six, when her father bought her a Brownie camera. Received a BFA from the Tyler School of Art, Philadelphia in 1971. Moved to the SoHo neighborhood of New York in 1973. Until 1977, Simmons photographic works were all black and white. She married fellow artist Carroll Dunham in 1983, and since have had two girls. Currently she lives and works in NYC.

3. Simmons received the Roy Lichtenstein Residency in the Visual Arts at the American Academy in Rome in 2005. She was awards an endowment from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation in 1997. In 1984, Simmons was given a grant by the National Endowment for the Arts. She has had major exhibitions at The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, The Museum of Modern Art in New York, The San Jose Museum of Art in California, The Baltimore Museum of Art, The Metropolitan Museum, The Guggenheim, The Whitney of American Art Museum in New York, The Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, The Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., and museums in Tokyo, Portugal, and Amsterdam. She also recently worked with the Gap Vote Campaign of 2008. Awards Work Has Been/Can Be Seen

4. Laurie Simmons stages photographs and films with ventriloquist dummies, paper dolls, finger puppets, and costumes dancers as living objects, as well as builds dollhouses and designs the interior space. She is inspired by music, musical theatre, and dance. Big Camera/Little Camera, 1976 http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/simmons/index.html

5. Photographs of dollhouse interior Deluxe-Redding House #4, 1998 Kaleidoscope House #5, 2000

6. Blonde/ Red Dress/ Kitchen, 1978 Woman/ Red Couch/ Newspaper, 1978 "The most important thing to me when I started to shoot my first photographs in the late 1970s was that I was an artist (not a photographer) using photography as a tool. First of all, I hadn’t studied photography so I was terribly self-conscious about my skills (of which I had none). I taught myself and also had my friend Jimmy DeSana pretty much teach me everything."

7. Series: “Underneath” Room Underneath (Red), 1998 House Underneath (Reclining), 1998

8. The Music of Regret (Act 1)2006 Still from movie http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/simmons/index.html http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jD_cD4uYONs

9. Do you see nostalgia in these works? What do you think one of the female characters means by there are only two kinds of cake? Do you prefer chocolate or vanilla?

10. The Music of Regret (Act II)2006

11. "Love runs through the film, much to my surprise...maybe it was the influence of the things I love- music, musicals- which are absolutely unafraid to address that topic. I was thinking so much about the American Songbook and musicals, and moving a narrative forward. Maybe that’s why romance finally came into my work. And at this time in my life, I’m ready to accept or own a kind of romance and melancholy or melodrama that I wasn’t ready to reveal before. It was always there in my inner life as an artist, but I was too afraid to share it." Clothes Make the Man, 1992 http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/simmons/index.html http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=px-ahXdsdVU&feature=related

12. What do the ventriloquist dummies make you feel? Can you get past the humor of them? Are you able to look past the dummy and find the love/romance that Meryl Streep is trying to come across for him?

13. "The first one that I shot was the camera that I borrowed from the Museum of the Moving Image. I placed it on my friend Jimmy DeSana, who taught me about photography. It seemed so fitting to put the camera on top of him, put him in a pair of white tights, and photograph him as Jimmy the Camera." Walking Camera I, Jimmy the Camera (Color), 1987 Magnum Opus (The Bye-Bye), 1991 The Music of Regret (Act III)2006

14. Walking Cake II (Color), 1989 http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/simmons/index.html# "Regret is the prevailing emotion in the film. It’s very much about the different guises of regret. That’s what keeps coming up. It’s something I’ve been exploring for a long time. Every way that I could think about it, I tried to make it come up in the movie."

15. What do you think the dancer’s in her work represent or add? Do you think regret is seen in her figures? Is there an object that you’d like to be…and what is it?

16. What Do You Think Is Laurie Simmons Big Idea? The Boxes (Ardis Vinklers) Ballroom II, 2005

17. Romance Regret Relationship Identity Place Play Humor Communication Nostalgia

18. Bibliography http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/simmons/index.html# http://www.lauriesimmons.net/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurie_Simmons http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=px-ahXdsdVU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jD_cD4uYONs http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=px-ahXdsdVU&feature=related http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/simmons/index.html# http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/simmons/clip1.html http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/simmons/clip2.html http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/simmons/index.html http://www.lauriesimmons.net/index.php?mode=text&section_id=116 http://www.lauriesimmons.net/index.php?mode=objectlist&section_id=11 8http://www.lauriesimmons.net/index.php?mode=objectlist&section_id=11 8