{"id":246493,"date":"2026-06-02T07:15:15","date_gmt":"2026-06-02T11:15:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=246493"},"modified":"2026-05-28T11:50:36","modified_gmt":"2026-05-28T15:50:36","slug":"used-dog-toys-a-favorite-medium-for-art-professor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2026\/06\/used-dog-toys-a-favorite-medium-for-art-professor\/","title":{"rendered":"Used Dog Toys a Favorite Medium for Art Professor"},"content":{"rendered":"

Douglas Degges<\/a> never thought he\u2019d be the guy who, upon meeting someone, almost immediately pulls out his phone to show off pictures of his dogs.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s Odie. Isn\u2019t he adorable?\u201d Degges asks, scrolling through camera roll photos of the 9-month-old and his older brother, Cricket.<\/p>\n

The associate professor of painting and drawing in UConn\u2019s Department of Art and Art History<\/a> stops and looks up: \u201cThis exchange we\u2019re having right now, this is one of the things I love about creative practice. It can move with your life,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Becoming a dog dad has affected Degges more than he probably realized four years ago when he first snuggled Cricket on adoption day in a big-box store parking lot. Thanks to his pups, Degges has found inspiration for his latest work.<\/p>\n

Like many canines, Cricket chews. The dachshund\/Jack Russell terrier\/poodle mix never met a rope or stuffed squeaky toy he didn\u2019t like. And almost from the minute he went home with Degges, the destruction ensued.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe produced a lot of waste quickly, and these things destined for the landfill were piling up fast,\u201d he says. \u201cI started thinking not just about how expensive dog toys are, but also how they\u2019re design objects. They\u2019re sold to us, not the dogs. They have beautiful shapes, colors, and considered edges. They\u2019re sculptures, really.\u201d<\/p>\n

The heap of dog toys that Degges piled into a child-sized shopping cart early in his days as a dog dad wouldn\u2019t last long, he knew. Cricket quickly was working his way through the various strengths of hollow rubber toys meant to be stuffed with treats. Few things survived his jaws.<\/p>\n

\u201cDog toys by design are single-use objects. They have to participate in designed obsolescence, or they might destroy a dog\u2019s teeth,\u201d he says. \u201cThey have to be destructible, and my dog destroys them all.\u201d<\/p>\n

As that happened, Degges noted the bite marks on nylon bones \u2013 a bit like the patterned marks left behind on the next page of his sketchbook. He also started to think that ripped fabric, pulled stuffing, and shredded strings might just make a dog toy more visually interesting than the neatly secured edges from the outset.<\/p>\n

Since 2009, Degges has enjoyed making collaborative art with other artists and family members, beginning with Hamlett Dobbins<\/a>, a former professor turned mentor who works with him through the mail to produce work jointly. So, looking to Cricket<\/a> \u2013 and now Odie, a beagle\/toy fox terrier\/Pekingese\/pug mix \u2013 as a co-creator wasn\u2019t so far-fetched.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen they\u2019re playing and I can\u2019t be in the studio because I\u2019m at UConn teaching, if they\u2019re chewing on a toy, I\u2019m simultaneously in the studio,\u201d he says. \u201cI love the idea of getting time out of time. If my dogs are at home doing their thing, then, in a way, I am also working in my studio.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018Abstraction invites speculation\u2019<\/strong><\/h3>\n

But what does Degges do with the chewed remnants of a stuffed cheeseburger<\/a>?<\/p>\n

\u201cRight out of the dog\u2019s mouth to a gallery wall,\u201d he says, tossing around a former toy that now looks like a bracelet of lettuce, cheese, and burger, the bun and center patty presumably digested.<\/p>\n

Of course, not everything from a pooch\u2019s mouth is as neatly destructed. Most toys are mutilated \u2013 heads torn off and arms dangling.<\/p>\n

Degges washes them all and separates them by type – textiles in one pile, filling in another, broken squeaker in the trash. He says he hasn\u2019t yet discovered a way to reuse those.<\/p>\n

Everything else is, or will be, turned into soft sculptures, although he talks about the possibility of one day restitching and restuffing a toy for a second and third go, if only to see if its number of lives can exceed a feline\u2019s fabled nine.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy parents encouraged me to make without prescribed outcome, which is how I\u2019ve fallen in love with process and abstraction, not knowing what I\u2019m doing but trusting that something will come out the other end,\u201d he says. \u201cAbstraction invites speculation. You\u2019re not clearly telling anybody what they\u2019re looking at. Some people perceive that as making the work less accessible. I see it as a requirement to slow down for a sustained look, co-creating meaning and showing up for the experience.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"A
Douglas Degges, an associate professor of painting and drawing in the Department of Art and Art History, reuses the fabric and fill from used dog toys to create soft sculptures. (Courtesy art)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Last fall when Degges was on sabbatical, he completed two residencies in Mexico City, Mexico. Three-quarters of his work focused on the dog toy project, and during his time there he connected with a group of dog walkers to distribute new toys for their four-legged wards. Other artists offered their dogs as collaborators, too. The returns became art.<\/p>\n

This summer, he plans to return to finish this phase of the project in preparation for a solo exhibition during the fall at Plomo Galer\u00eda<\/a> in Mexico City. That show will feature a playful study of dog beds \u2013 human-sized, 6-foot-wide, stuffed, bean-bag-like beds – on which he\u2019s painted. They\u2019ll serve as functional dog furniture, but also as plinths to display some of the smaller dog toy sculptures.<\/p>\n

Degges says that around the time he started the project four years ago, he read Donna Haraway\u2019s 2016 book \u201cStaying with the Trouble\u201d and took to heart her questions of how to live through an ecological crisis like climate change without becoming paralyzed by it. How can one cultivate hope?<\/p>\n

\u201cMy takeaway was to begin thinking about how to live in new and different ways with the biodiversity we share space with. For me, that was immediately my dog,\u201d he says. \u201cHow can I live with my dog in curious, surprising ways that are going to increase my capacity to make the world less human-centered?<\/p>\n

\u201cHer book gave me language to talk about the work in a research university context and to think about how the arts might intersect with the social sciences and humanities,\u201d he continues.<\/p>\n

Artmaking Through Collaboration<\/strong><\/h3>\n

These are things he wasn\u2019t consciously thinking about growing in northern Louisiana, where young Degges spent most days outdoors learning to problem-solve without help from the internet, and to work with his hands in nature, often foraging for supplies. His mother engaged the family in a years-long project to build a retaining wall from reclaimed cement blocks they found in construction demolition piles.<\/p>\n

When he started college, Degges majored in math, studying art on the side after having enjoyed it merely as a high school elective and taking a handful of lessons in his youth. Algebra, geometry, trigonometry –\u00a0 those were core classes all the way to calculus 3, theoretical math that began to push into philosophy, he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy professor described waking up in the middle of the night having to urgently solve a math problem in the notebook on his bedside table,\u201d Degges says. \u201cFor me, the relationship he had with his research felt alive in the way a sketchbook practice exists for me. This book that\u2019s glued to my body, literally in a back pocket or my bag, is with me at all times.\u201d<\/p>\n

That may have been the moment he realized art was his direction and switched to a studio art major, but he notes that teaching is his calling. Being in a room with others interested in the same subject, talking with them, creating with them, vitalizes him in a way that resembles the collaborative or communal art he makes in his free time.<\/p>\n

Yes, that started with a former professor turned mentor<\/a>, but collaboration has extended now to family. Degges describes himself as a collage artist, \u201cbut in terms of identity, I think about everything through the lens and history of painting and drawing.\u201d<\/p>\n

His family text stream includes pictures of snake skins, the fin of an alligator gar, a grasshopper, things from nature back home. Degges sketches them in graphite pencil and often places them over colorful backgrounds he\u2019s painted to give a collage effect. It\u2019s an idea that came to him when a UConn student told him they wanted to draw things as realistically as a photograph would capture \u2013 Degges replied with \u201cwhy replicate what a camera can do?\u201d<\/p>\n

Degges\u2019 family collaborations might look abstract<\/a>, even though they\u2019re rooted in reality, because he presents a magnified view of a fish scale or berry, for instance, in the graphite drawing or painted background.<\/p>\n

\u201cCollaboration has always been a vehicle to turn an isolated or solo experience into something communal or social,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

And that might be what makes man\u2019s best friend the best collaborator.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is all just a vehicle to spoil them endlessly,\u201d Degges says of his dog toy project. \u201cLife is so beautiful and awesome. I\u2019m doing a lot of things that I never thought I would be doing or certainly not in the ways that I\u2019m doing them. I knew that collaboration and whatever happens in terms of critical discourse would be involved, but with dogs? Never.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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