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Cooper responded that the toy could also be considered a “soft sculpture” and part of a collection.

And the long thin “Sleeping Serpent” is a soft sculpture sheathed in a shiny black fabric complete with faux scales whose tackiness is offset by its subtle, unexpected head — that of a slumbering woman in blue ceramic.

He had been making cake sculptures since at least 1962, when his first wife, artist Patty Mucha, helped sew yards of canvas stuffed with foam rubber and cardboard into the form of a giant chocolate slice of it for a pillowy soft sculpture that stands on the floor.

Early in his career, he was a key developer of “soft sculpture” made out of vinyl — another way of transforming ordinary objects — and also helped invent the quintessential 1960s art event, the “Happening.”

The piece casts intriguing shadows, as do Cindy Winnick’s soft sculpture of a dancer with oversize feet and Mahy Polymeropoulos’s “Sea Urchin,” which reduces the creature to a nest of blue wires.