Marcia Ratliff/Winonan

For Winona State University art professor Alessandra Sulpy, putting toys away is a problem.

Sulpy, who is teaching painting at Winona State this year, collects vintage knickknacks and toys to inspire her paintings.

But not just any toys. Sulpy said she looks for toys with an “ember,” or “a wink and a nod,” which gives her a sense of the toys having a conscience.

“Because they have this, they come off as being more than toys,” she said.

In her paintings, Sulpy creates a world for the toys to live in. In Sulpy’s creations, however, the toys have the upper hand.

The human figures in her paintings are flat, lacking the life the toys have. Sulpy uses human analogs such as yearbook photos, mannequins, dolls and vintage pornography to fill the toys’ world.

“Within this realm that I’m creating, each narrative is a little bit different. I’m rearranging those predetermined roles,” she said.

In spite of the heavy usage of dolls and other female representations, Sulpy said her work is not overtly feminist or activist.

“Basically, I’m creating a surrealistic universe populated by lady-ish figures lots of times,” she said. “But there’s nothing saying, ‘this is the lesson you should learn from it.’”

Having graduated with her Master of Fine Arts three years ago from Indiana University Bloomington, Sulpy said she describes herself as an emerging artist.

She has done several solo shows around the United States, and this year she is also serving as a juror for a show in Pennsylvania, where she lived before coming to Winona.

Art department chairperson Anne Scott Plummer said Sulpy was one of 120 applicants to the one-year position at Winona State.

From the other side, Sulpy said, “It takes like a hundred applications for me to get a job. It’s one of those things where you have to have that fire burning under your butt to do it.”

Nonetheless, Sulpy said she was comfortable with that fire.

“To be an artist you kind of have to have that little bit of ego because you have to be seen, you have to make a name for yourself in some way. Otherwise it doesn’t provide you with a career,” she said.

Plummer said Sulpy was offered the position at Winona State in part because of her energetic teaching personality and strong figure painting skills.

“We’re really confident that she has a high level of personal accomplishment in painting and has all of that to share,” Plummer said.

In addition, Plummer said Sulpy is in touch with the contemporary art world, something that is important for her students.

Senior art student Emily Petersen agreed.

She said, “Being younger, she is also able to give us feedback or teach us something we’ve heard before in a unique way that we really connect with.”

This semester, Sulpy is teaching two drawing and two painting classes as well as two independent studies.

Meanwhile, she’s also working on another body of work, a spin-off from her work with the toys.

The town of New Kensington, Penn., inspired this series.

Ten miles from Pittsburgh, New Kensington is an old manufacturing town whose industries died in the 1950s. Now the town is a conglomeration of beautiful buildings from the 20s, cheap buildings from the 60s and empty lots.

“You can just peel back the layers, kind of like an onion, of what used to be there,” Sulpy said. “There’s an amazing sense of timelessness.”

This sense of a town that is neither alive nor dead reminded Sulpy of her work with the toys and mannequins.

So in her new series the mannequins take over the town, inhabiting the empty stores.

Sulpy said she is experimenting with media in this series, including fluorescent paint and faux gold leaf.

Fluorescent paint, notably, is non-permanent. “Because it’s actually glowing, through the years it’s going to wear itself out. It’s part of what I’m doing, because it relates to these places.”

Sulpy said she deliberately chose faux gold leaf as well, because like brass on an old building, it’s a derelict, ultimately doomed glamor.

Contact Marcia at [email protected]