Submitted Photo
A peach, an eggplant, and cherries are a few of the Fruity Friends creatures local artist Mackenzie Ploof has made in homage to her day job at a Minot grocery store. Photo from Mackenzie Ploof.
Minot sculptor Mackenzie Ploof was gifted her first clique of Monster High dolls when she was around 10 years old, an event Ploof believes influenced her interest in sculpture and creative figure making. The gift wasn’t received by happenstance, however.
“I discovered (Monster High dolls) before they were released in stores. I was like ‘Mom! Dad! Look! Toys R’ Us has this! And we can order it from Toys R’ Us! They’re not available anywhere else yet!’ I had a whole powerpoint made,” Ploof said. “Because my parents are wonderful, they ordered me the whole first set.”
Ploof eagerly collected the Monster High dolls and was extremely excited about the creativity happening in later designs of the first generation dolls, some of which had six arms or two heads, etc.
Whenever Ploof received a new Monster High doll she would immediately undress it and admire the articulated jointing and creature-like anatomy.
“How do you figure out what a bug person is supposed to look like and the jointing and exoskeleton?” she said about her curiosities as a youth.
Submitted Photo
This Intergalactic Family includes three sculptures made by local artist Mackenzie Ploof. From left, the creatures are named Martina, Aileen and Allen. Photo from Mackenzie Ploof.
This fascination found its way into Ploof’s work as a sculptor, and she’s recently been exploring fruity food creatures and humanoid troll-like figures.
Trolls and body folds
“Bodies are hard. Having a body is hard. I think the humanoid creatures I’ve been making are also ‘how do I understand having a body’ or ‘how does my body evolve,’” Ploof said.
“Going back to Monster High, moms were always saying, ‘Barbies are a bad influence on girls’ body image,’ and then Monster High came out and (the moms) said, ‘These are even worse!’ and I was thinking, ‘That’s kind of silly,’ but also, I noticed it in myself,” said Ploof about the unrealistic beauty standards dolls have historically portrayed.
Ploof received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in sculpture and a minor in industrial design from the Savannah College of Art and Design in Georgia. She initially felt alienated during her studies.
“Atlanta was very different. There were a lot of different cultural things I had to learn before I felt comfortable trying to incorporate myself into that (scene),” she said.
“I became much skinnier while I was away. … And then I came back up here and I kept getting told, ‘Oh you’re too skinny. Are you healthy? Are you eating?’ All these things,” Ploof said.
“I don’t know if dysmorphia is the right word in this situation, but I would think, ‘Oh that little bit of flab shouldn’t be there,’ but realistically that’s how bodies move. And when you bend, there’s a flab and that’s okay,” Ploof said about her evolving perception of her body and bodies in general.
“I think I’ve observed my progression (artistically) from ‘This is a very idealized version of a body. It doesn’t fold. It doesn’t bend. It’s in a position but you can’t really see any skin,’ to now ‘Here’s some extra fat, Here’s a muscle. Here’s this little fold and little flap,’” Ploof said.
Ploof now enjoys adding wrinkles and “flabby bits” to her pieces. One of her favorite pieces is a creature she calls Wrinklerump.
“He’s happy. He’s cute,” she said about the versatile creature.
One of Ploof’s first creature sculptures was of a bright green, goblin-like sprite. Ploof named the creature “Rue,” who is also the inspiration for Ploof’s brand logo.
“This is the first kind of human figure that I did. There aren’t any folds. It was just kind of a weird Ken (doll) body,” Ploof said.
Ploof compared Rue to a 2023 sculpture she made of a smiling, troll-like figure in a reclining position. The troll’s skin is bubblegum pink with pale yellow feet and the figure has a soft tummy with wrinkles around the skin folds.
“She’s hanging out. She’s living her truth,” Ploof said.
Growing up Ploof
Much of Ploof’s work can be described as cute, whimsical and “friend-shaped.” Ploof attributes this to how she grew up. Ploof has siblings from her father’s previous marriage but was more or less raised as an only child due to those siblings being much older.
“I grew up around adults. I grew up learning how to talk to adults and I never really knew how to talk to people my age. So it was hard to make friends,” she said. “So basically I’m just a lonely, little person and I make cute little guys so they can be my friends, and then they are my friends because they just sit in my house and they look at me and they smile.
“And now I sound like a serial killer,” Ploof laughed.
Despite being surrounded by adults, Ploof’s creativity was encouraged and nourished.
“My parents really went out of their way to read to me all the time and make sure that I liked stories and liked story-telling and wanted to read,” Ploof said. “And it wasn’t just kids’ books. By the end of my childhood we would read chapter books. It was really fun. It was like everywhere we would go there was a story about something.”
Ploof said her mother still has a knack for finding and creating stories in everyday scenarios. Ploof’s mother can often be found doing arts and crafts projects or gardening as well. Ploof’s father is an everyday, hobby handyman.
“He’s always got that honey-do list where he’s doing something,” Ploof said.
“Retrospectively, the stuff that I make has ended up being a very good marriage of the things that I observed (my parents) doing,” Ploof said about her interest in woodworking, power tools, organic forms and storybook-esque creatures.
Fruity friends
“I think that art is just me processing different things about being alive, or things that I have to tolerate about being alive,” Ploof said, referring to both having a body and having a job as aspects of being alive.
Ploof has worked at a local Minot grocery store on and off for around 10 years and her “Fruity Friends” series was inspired by her real life day job at the grocery store as well as a trip to the famed “Omega Mart” installation by Meow Wolf in Las Vegas.
“The grocery store nerd in me wanted to go. I wore my grocery store uniform and my nametag and went to Omega Mart,” Ploof said. In preparation for her trip, Ploof made a strawberry creature in honor of Omega Mart’s surreal produce department.
Ploof started making additional pieces for her “Fruity Friends” series for a local small works show.
“I got really sad so I went to therapy and then my therapist said, ‘Hey, go make a thing,’ and I said, ‘OK. I’ll make a banana,’ and I made a banana,” Ploof said.
In addition to the strawberry and banana creatures, Ploof’s “Fruity Friends” series also includes a sea turtle made from orange slices, a wrinkle-faced peach, cheek-kissing cherries, a duck-like eggplant and will soon include a tomato.
“We all end up memorizing all of the codes for ringing up produce, and so it’s become useless knowledge that I have because I don’t do (cashiering) anymore,” Ploof said. “4668 is green onions! Like, why do I know that?”
Ploof has repurposed some of this cashiering knowledge by incorporating unique PLU stickers, or “product look up” stickers, into her fruity friend designs. These are the little barcode stickers found on apples, bananas and other produce.
“The thing that delights me about (the fruity creatures) is the package design aspect of them,” Ploof said. She believes this fascination with package design is another thing picked up from the grocery store.
Ploof is one of the cake artists at the bakery in the grocery store. She’s occasionally allowed to freely express herself with frosting and fondant but must typically work within the constraints and visions of the customers.
Ploof hopes to incorporate her knowledge of cake making and decorating into her future works.
“I have plans to do cake creatures as well, or dessert creatures rather,” Ploof said. “These are the things that I hold onto that interest me about this day job.”
