Greer's World

Greer Lankton's figures seem extraordinarily real. They are sometimes called dolls, but dolls are more vacant and benign. Greer's figures are mannequin-like, but they are more than mannequins. In some ways they resemble the minutely detailed figures of northern Renaissance painting. Though they begin with plastic soda bottles, masking tape, and panty hose, they are slowly and carefully created, detailed layer upon layer, then finished with perfectly realized makeup and hair, or, sometimes left rawly unresolved. Each of Greer's figures is uniquely compelling.

I had seen some of Greer's work in the early to mid-1990s, and it remained with me. I first spoke with her when I called her in Chicago—she had moved back there after working and exhibiting in New York—to ask if she would be interested in creating a full-scale installation at the Mattress Factory in Pittsburgh. This would be the largest project she had ever undertaken, and she agreed to the exhibition right away. After a number of months, rambling phone conversations, and a trip to Pittsburgh for Greer to see the Mattress Factory space, we had not made much progress on the show, so I went to see her in Chicago.

Greer's one-room Chicago apartment was amazing and awful. She had painted the ceiling blue with stars, and her figures peopled the space everywhere. Seen together, all of her characters resembled Greer in one way or another. She told me that most visitors who came to the apartment for the first time—acquaintances or people she had met hanging around—thought that she was crazy when they saw all of her figures. In addition to the figures, the apartment was filled with framed drawings and photographs, souvenirs and decorations. It was also dark and dirty, and the floor was covered with magazines and clothing. But Greer had clearly worked on the space, and she inhabited it completely. During this visit, Greer selected the figures and other works from around the apartment to go to Pittsburgh and also sent along a lot of magazines, saying that this was a good way to clean up. She was always working on a number of creations, and some of these would later come to the Mattress Factory.

Greer came to Pittsburgh to work on her installation about a month before the exhibition was scheduled to open. She stayed in an apartment in the second of the Mattress Factory's exhibition buildings and went to the main building to work. The apartment had been designed by Allan Wexler as Bed Sitting Rooms for an Artist in Residence (1988), but Greer immediately began to transform it. The furniture, floors, and large potted plant were progressively draped and decorated. When visitors came through the building to view other Mattress Factory displays, they sometimes came to Greer's door by mistake. She would invite them in to look around and chat. She also got to know everyone who hung around on the street corners. Despite any distractions, Greer committed herself to her work, and she knew exactly what she wanted to do with her installation.

The installation began as a small one-room house erected in one of the Mattress Factory's large galleries. The exterior—vinyl siding, AstroTurf front yard, striped-stockinged legs in "ruby slippers" trapped at the foundation of the house, with a bust of Candy Darling gazing into the distance—was amusing and somewhat sad. Inside the house, Greer created a strangely idealized version of her apartment. Figures, drawings, decorations, collections, shrines, photographs, and magazines were all arranged under her blue starred ceiling. She included a multitude of material, but nothing superfluous. The selection and placement of objects and vignettes—early autobiographical drawings, dolls, plastic flowers, a religious shrine and a shrine to Patti Smith, anorexic fashionistas, a wasted figure surrounded by pill bottles, painful female torsos, photographs of Greer—created an exaggerated effect. It was difficult to...