Maybe a pincushion is a far cry from a fetish.  A fetish is something not exactly or always desirable in sculpture, being a superstitious if not actually a shamanistic object; and yet, to my mind it’s not so far from a pincushion—after all, pins are routinely stuck in both.  This one was my bid for a statement of simple form, maybe not so simple, with its equivocal psychic suggestion—something I believe form cannot exist without. Not an image but bristling with images.  And pins.

     –from Dorothea Tanning: Birthday and Beyond. Exhibition brochure. Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2000.