13 Facts About Kaari Upson

Kaari Upson was born in San Bernardino, California, on April 22,1970.

Kaari Upson attended New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture and later attended California Institute of the Arts.

Kaari Upson received her BFA in 2004 and her MFA in 2007 from CalArts.

Kaari Upson began The Larry Project as a student, and exhibited a portion of the work as her MFA thesis.

Kaari Upson was married from 2000 until 2010 to television producer Kirk Rudell, together they had one child.

In 2003, after trespassing onto an abandoned property across the street from her parents' home in San Bernardino, Kaari Upson discovered boxes of ephemera: letters, legal documents, diaries, photographs, all belonging to one man who she later dubbed 'Larry.

Kaari Upson discovered that 'Larry' styled himself after Hugh Hefner and partied at the Playboy Mansion; he was involved in a few different self-help programs, including Jungian analysis, chakra cleansing, Gestalt Therapy, and Erhard Seminars Training.

In 2008, Kaari Upson made "The Grotto," a fiberglass replica of the infamous cave-like swimming pool at the Playboy Mansion.

Inside the sculpture, Kaari Upson projected videos of herself, wearing silicon prostheses of breasts and genitalia, straddling the 'Larry' doll.

In 2009, Kaari Upson cast the 'Larry' doll into charcoal, and used the form to make drawings against the gallery wall, slowly destroying the charcoal form in the process.

In 2011, Kaari Upson cast architectural copies of 'Larry's' former house into soft pink latex, as well as other objects, like a chandelier and an iron gate.

In "Mirrored Staircase Inversion ", Kaari Upson went back to the site of the original house, which was now an empty dirt lot.

Themes of twinning, mirror images, and negative copies emerge throughout the project, as Kaari Upson drew on the pervasive fantasy of the twin Playboy Bunnies and the discovery of her own reflection in a complete stranger.