In sleep begins creativity.

At least that was the case with my friend Toby Fox, who is often awake in the middle of the night remembering every detail of her elaborate dreams.

Last year, when she couldn’t go back to sleep, she began to record them in her  on-line dream diary, Sleeping Bunnies.

Sharing her dreams with an on-line community, her blog became an  opportunity to invite friends and strangers to offer interpretations and comments.

To illustrate these dream narratives, Toby, an award winning graphic designer and magazine art director at Saveur, Garden Design, and Offspring, used her Palm Treo cell phone to create photographs. In the quiet time before dawn, she choreographed close encounters between her daughter’s Barbies, Play Mobil Toys, and Polly Pockets.

These beautiful and strange photographs with their soft focus, and blurry, impressionistic colors take the viewer into the secret life of dolls in a subconscious landscape that is somewhere between night and day.

Like dreams, these dolls enact a vaguely erotic life as they interact with other toys, stare  thoughtfully into space, and express deep wells of longing with their plastic eyes.

A point-of-entry into the into emotional logic of Toby’s dreams, the photographs both illustrate and elaborate on the text. Written in a straightforward, matter-of-fact style, her words depict surprising leaps of time, space, and reality.

It is the confluence of the text and the photos that best express Toby’s willingness to look deeply at her dreams and honor the symbolic language and insight they provide.

She will be displaying these photographs she calls "Bunny Thoughts" at the PS 321 Holiday Craft Fair. Prints will be available for purchase. 11 a.m. – 4 p.m. 180 Seventh Avenue. Park Slope, Brooklyn.