When Emily Duffy saw the ad she thought she had found exactly what she was looking for — 20,000 bras.

"Nicolino, the artist who collected used brassieres from all across the country in the hope of stringing them across the Grand Canyon — whoa! said Park Department feds — is offering 20,000 used bras free to an arts organization or teaching institution," read the ad, which was tucked in Leah Garchik's Personals, a daily column in The San Francisco Chronicle that dishes dirt and information about local personalities.

"Nicolino has moved on. However, he feels responsible to the women who donated bras. . . . It is more difficult than you'd imagine to give away 20,000 bras."

After reading that ad, Duffy called Nicolino to inquire about taking the bras off his hands. That is where their stories and their bra balls diverge.

Since Duffy answered that ad, the artists have been feuding over the idea of using bras to build a spherical sculpture made of those bras — who first thought of doing that and who owns the birthrights to the bra ball concept. She claims he stole it from her. He says he came up with the idea and spelled it out to her.

Today Nicolino’s "Big Giant Bra Ball," is housed in his Vallejo, California, home. Made of about 20,000 bras, the ball is five feet tall and weighs 1,400 pounds.

Duffy, an artist who received her bachelor’s degree in the arts from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1993, keeps her "BraBall" in her studio in El Cerrito, California — just five miles from Vallejo. Her bra ball, made of 7,000 bras, is four feet tall and weighs more than 1,000 pounds.

They each are making very different artistic and social statements with their work. Nicolino says his artwork celebrates female breasts and has appeared on The Howard Stern Show to describe his work. Meanwhile Duffy talks to publications like Spotlight Health magazine about how she used the bras to raise money to support breast cancer awareness.
But their fight over the inspiration for the bra ball continues.

"I have done artwork about female body image and gender issues for years and immediately jumped at the chance to have some of the bras," says Duffy, 43, recounting her side of the story.

"Using bras as an art medium — something I’ve been doing for several years now — is a way of disrupting some of the longstanding taboos surrounding them. Interweaving stained nursing bras with provocative, augmentation bras somehow balances the distorted images of women’s bodies," writes Duffy on her Web site, www.braball.com. "Almost every woman has a bra story to tell."

One of Duffy’s bra-related art pieces is the "Mammolith," a sculpture of a white corset approximately eight feet tall. Another one of her pieces is the "VAINVAN," a pink minivan she has decorated with images and words about femininity and society’s demands on female appearance.

Initially, says Duffy, she only wanted a few hundred of Nicolino’s bras to make a "car bra" for the VAINVAN.

But Nicolino, whose full name is Ron Nicolino, didn’t want to part with just a fraction of his bras; he wanted Duffy to take the entire collection of 20,000 off his hands.
It was during their first hour-long negotiation over the bras, says Duffy, that she got the idea for the bra ball.

"I thought of the BraBall during that phone conversation, and proposed it as what I would do with the bras he was giving away. I asked myself ‘What would I do with that many bras?’ An image of the BraBall formed in my mind."

According to Duffy, the idea for the ball was inspired by toys she had seen on visits to San Francisco’s Chinatown.

"Papier mâchè balls about the size of a baseball, with shiny, pretty paper around them, and a little toy hidden inside. I envisioned the BraBall resembling these toys," she explains. "I saw it having a central core with items relating to breasts and bras inside a capsule, which was covered first by many layers of plain-colored bras, and then by bright, colorful ones.

"I told him I would make a big ball of bras, and how amusing I thought it would be. He said he loved the idea, it was the best proposal he’d heard yet. I felt it was important to have materials representing his story included in my sculpture. He offered to give me documentation of the history of the bras to include in the time capsule, and said he could even get me a breast implant," she says.

Nicolino remembers that phone conversation a bit differently.

"During our initial phone conversation, this individual suggested a bra ball. I kind of led her there by the hand. I showed her a picture of the spool," he says, referring to the giant wooden spool he has wrapped with about 10,000 bras. "And she knew about my Grand Canyon project."

***

Nicolino has been collecting bras for about 10 years. But even before he began collecting bras, he was creating art about female breasts and brassieres.

"In 1992, I did a show called ‘Tits: Another American Icon,’" says the self-described architect, building contractor, bookkeeper, ass-kicker and schlepper. "It was humorous social commentary about breast obsession in the culture. It was all sculpture. "There was a whole wall made of concrete breasts. They’re designed to be building blocks, like the kind used to cover ugly tilt-up buildings," he explains, pointing to a block of concrete with a pair of life-like female breasts erupting from it.

The concrete block of breasts are propped up on Nicolino’s desk in the empty living room of a Point Richmond house he is remodeling for the owner. The owner is so taken with Nicolino’s sculpture that he has asked the artist to place a pair of the concrete breasts on the tile wall of a new bathtub in the master bedroom. The artist lovingly displays his handiwork in the bathroom, showing off the way he had the plumber install the tub’s faucet just above the breasts. When someone uses the bathtub, explains Nicolino, water will splash down over the concrete breasts, keeping them glistening wet.

"Then there were Jell-O molds made of the shape. The mold was on a platter with springs, so people could wiggle it. There was tons of other stuff," he says of his breast artwork.
"But from that, there was one piece: a two-dimensional photo collage I did depicting bras spanning the Grand Canyon. Wonderful image," he says, laughing. "Conceptually it was

like women of the planet were donating bras to build a bridge to span this rift, the biggest cleavage on Earth."
The photo collage of "Bras Across the Grand Canyon" attracted media attention, according to Nicolino. And supporters of his spread the word about the photo collage to friends of theirs.

"Pretty soon, people were sending bras from all over the place. To date, maybe 40, 50, 60,000 bras. More than enough to span the Grand Canyon," he says.
"The project had its own power after awhile," says Nicolino. "I wasn’t using the Internet or anything."

The bras continue to come in to Nicolino. "I just have fun going to the post office," he says.

A package of bras recently arrived from Japan. "These five bras are all washed and neatly folded and wrapped in tissue. Really organized. I think it’s a cultural thing," he says, reflecting on the package.

For several years, Nicolino kept the bras in boxes and bags around his Vallejo home. He experimented with different projects, including trying to weave a tapestry of the Statue of Liberty out of the bras, with the statue holding a bra in one hand.

Then, in 1994, he had the idea to tie all the bras together and wrap them around a large wooden spool — the kind often found around construction sites. Nicolino recruited his daughter and some friends and set out for Golden Gate Park to link the bras together. The project attracted attention from passersby, who willingly chipped in to help roll the bras on to the spool, and from the media.

But Nicolino finally grew weary of bra-art. About a year and a half ago, he began trying to give away his growing collection of bras — both on the spool and in bags.

"I was trying to get some group to say what they were going to do with it and do something consistent with the politics and history of my project and do it with some style. Maybe like that spool," he says.

"This big spool inspired the idea of bra ball," he adds.

But Nicolino didn’t attempt to build a bra ball at the time. Instead he sent out a press release to the San Francisco Chronicle, detailing his intentions for giving away his sizable collection. He sat back and waited for the responses to come rolling in.

***

Enter Emily Duffy.

According to Nicolino, "An individual got involved and made a proposal for taking it [the collection]. I asked her to make a written proposal and form a group," he explains.

(Nicolino rarely mentions Duffy by name, referring to her only as an "individual.")

Duffy followed up with a letter.

"I suggested we might collaborate," she says. "I had thought it would be novel and refreshing for a female artist and a male artist to collaborate on an art project involving gender issues."

Duffy wrote in her letter to Nicolino:

"I like the concept of playing with the idea. You have gotten so much public attention for the bra project partly because you are male. I imagine many people have had trouble understanding why a man would choose to use bras as a medium (other than to assume perversion of some sort). I’m sure also that many women were self-righteously angered by the attention you got for it.

"If we were to work on this together it would completely turn that ‘us and them’ mentality on its head.... It’s just that you’ve put so much time and energy into collecting the bras, it would be a shame for you not to be part of their final use. Not only that, as you mentioned, the sexualization of apparel also affects men. I’ve been meaning to do a jock strap art piece for years. Now that would get some press, eh? <grin>."

Nicolino says he was not impressed with what Duffy had to say about her intended project.

"The proposal was a failure. It describes something kind of angry, and so I withdrew the offer for that reason and because a group had not been formed. There’s too much ego involved with individuals. I wanted a group to take this thing because I can’t afford to do it," he says.

Two months later, in December 2000, Duffy received a call from Nicolino. According to Duffy, he had decided not to give her his collection of bras. Instead, he was going to construct a ball of bras on his own.

Duffy writes on her Web site that she immediately copyrighted her sketches, notes and a photo of a scale model of the bra ball.

"I also got a lawyer. My lawyer sent the other artist a cease-and-desist letter. The other artist then got himself a lawyer, who claimed that I cannot hold a copyright on the concept or sketch of a sculpture."

(Like Nicolino, Duffy rarely mentions her adversary by name, preferring to call him "the other artist.")

"The only way I could keep the other artist from appropriating my design, it seemed, was to make a full-sized, permanent BraBall immediately."

But Duffy had only her own ten bras to work with, which could not compete with the more than 20,000 bras Nicolino had amassed. So in January 2001, Duffy e-mailed her friends, mostly female artists, explaining what she was doing and why.

"There are still people responding to my original e-mail, which is almost a year old," says Duffy. Since sending out that e-mail, she has received more than 15,000 bras. She plans to use most of them on the BraBall.

The BraBall resides in Duffy’s El Cerrito garage-cum-studio. Black bras, stained with white deodorant semi-circles, link to red velvet bras, festooned with feathers and lace. Five-hook bras, built for well-endowed women, connect to training bras sent to Duffy by women from around the world. The ball, which stands as high as Duffy’s chest, also has a peculiar smell — the fading, commingling scents of hundreds of perfumes, deodorants and natural odors of thousands of women.

"There are some very poignant bras on here. You know, daughters sending mothers’ bras after they’ve died of breast cancer, women sending their own bras after they’ve lost a breast, little girls’ training bras," says Duffy.

The ball is like a ball of yarn, she explains, but that yarn is bras hooked end to end.

The ball is solid bras, except for a "time capsule" of objects in the center. The capsule, which is made from a child’s plastic cosmetics case Duffy bought at K-Mart, holds documentation of her dispute with Nicolino, a red glass heart that she broke while going through therapy about being an incest survivor and about 20 letters from her best friend’s husband.

"The BraBall is dedicated to my best friend, Jessica Hickey. We’ve been best friends for 42 years, since we were two," says Duffy.

Hickey was diagnosed with breast cancer about six years ago. During her battle with cancer, her husband would send detailed letters to friends and family about Jessica’s chemotherapy, radiation, medications and diet to let them know how she was doing. Hickey has now been cancer-free for almost four years.

Also inside the capsule at the center of the ball is one of Duffy’s bras.

"I started this project with my own bras. I put one inside the capsule. Then I took a wad of silicon — ironic, isn’t? — and glued the straps of one of my other bras to the outside. From there I started hooking bras together," she says.

"I have about 700 set aside to go on the final outside layer of the ball — either very unusual ones or those that are representational of many women.

"There’s this one Victoria’s Secret bra that I think I’ve gotten about 2,000 of. This is like a $30 or $40 bra. I assume there’s something really wrong with that bra that so many women don’t want it. It’s satin and has a really wide strap with no elastic. I think it must just fall off people’s shoulders. It also has a seam that goes right across the center of the bra and no lining. [The bras] are very pretty, but if you have sensitive skin, you must walk around all day itching," says Duffy.

At 48 inches tall and weighing almost 1,000 pounds, the ball is now at a size where Duffy can no longer work on it alone.

"I worked on it until it got to be about 3,000 bras. I worked on it mostly by myself," she says. "Early on, when it was smaller, I was able to use all kinds of bras — sports bras or bras that close in the front and thread them together. Since it has gotten so big, I haven’t been able to use anything other than the traditional hook-and-eye closure."

To add bras to the ball, Duffy and several of her friends hook long chains of bras together, then push the ball around in a circle, stretching the bra chains across the surface.
"It’s getting too big to be worked on by just four women. It really needs other women to push," she says.

***

That prompted the first "BraBall Roll-On."

In March, Duffy recruited about 100 women to help her push the BraBall and add bra chains to it. The event, held at a Unitarian church meeting hall in Kensington, California, just a few miles east of Duffy’s home, was a combination fund-raiser and ball-rolling. Attendees were required to give five bras to the ball or donate $5 to the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation, the non-profit organization started by Komen’s sister after she died of breast cancer that is dedicated to eradicating the disease.

Duffy contributed roughly 5,000 more bras, that she had stuffed in boxes and paper grocery sacks, and then dumped onto the floor of the church auditorium in a circle surrounding the ball. Following an opening blessing of the ball by another local artist, Duffy asked women to grab a pile of bras and start hooking.

With most of the women hooking bras together, 2,700 bras were linked into a single massive chain in only an hour-and-a-half. Wrapping that chain around the BraBall took another three hours.

The BraBall Roll-On was as much a social event as a work session. Women talked at the Chocolate Bar — a table spread with brownies, cookies, fudge, chocolates and other candy — while others danced to the live harp music, pushed the bra ball or helped feed the chain of bras onto the ball.

"This is great therapy," said ball-pusher and artist Mindy Brown of Oakland as she and five other women struggled to push the ball in a circle around the auditorium. "We should do this every weekend."

Many of the volunteers got a chance to push the ball, but not everyone enjoyed it.

"I pushed the ball for about three minutes. Then I couldn’t push anymore. My heart was pounding. It’s just too heavy," said Barbara Bennett, 68, from Albany.

Although there were about 20 men present at the Roll-On, they were not allowed to help string bras together or push the mammoth ball.

"One thing that has evolved along with [the ball] is that it needs to only be made by women’s hands," said Duffy. "My husband has been an incredible supporter, and he understands that this is something he can’t work on. It also creeps him out a little bit, but he understands. It’s not his business. It’s not against men. It’s for women, of women, by women, to women. That’s a beautiful thing, and there’s not enough of that."

At the end of the night, after hours of bra-hooking and ball-pushing, Duffy declared the Roll-On a wonderful success. More than 500 bras had been donated to the ball, and approximately 2,700 bras were added to the BraBall, making a new total of 10,103. The event also raised $800 for the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation.

This is a far cry from the last bra-adding session Duffy held in her studio. As she explains, "The last bra adding session took us — four women — two hours to add 550 bras. The ball grew 1/4 inch."

Duffy would like to see her BraBall grow to be five feet four inches, the height of the average American woman.

"One reason the male artist didn’t give me his bras was that he didn’t feel I was going to make it big enough. I tried to get across to him that I didn’t think ‘big enough’ is part of the problem here. Women have died trying to have bigger breasts. It’s not so dangerous now, but it’s not normal. Why this obsession with bigger, bigger, bigger? It’s not always better," she says.

"I decided the size had to have meaning. The size had to somehow reflect the women that had been giving me bras because this would not be without them. I mean, with my own 10 bras and my friends, the ball was only about this big," says Duffy, holding her hands a couple feet apart.

Once the BraBall reaches its full height she hopes to find an "appropriate and meaningful home for the sculpture where women can visit and interact with it."

Duffy would also like to create a project or memorial from the hundreds of letters, postcards and pieces of art she has received along with the packages of bras mailed to her. Some of the letters are humorous; one woman sent along one of her husband’s jock straps in case Duffy ever decided to switch mediums.

But most women seem to have sent bras out of frustration and anger, often at the bras themselves.

"There are very few letters in this huge pile of letters I’ve gotten that say, ‘I’m sending you my favorite bra. It’s finally dead.’ Most of them are letters like, ‘You can have this thing. I spent a fortune on it, and it’s never fit right.’"

Other women have contributed bras to the BraBall out of frustration at Duffy’s battle with Nicolino over rights to the idea for the ball.

"The letters I’ve received from bra donors reflect the variety of reasons they’ve wanted to be a part of the BraBall project. Many are upset by the story of how this project began; they’re incensed by the thought of a man appropriating a creative idea from a woman, especially one about female body image," says Duffy.

A contributor from Illinois writes, "I am thrilled to send you my most uncomfortable, binding bra! It is my statement of fidelity to the sisterhood. I had a great time soliciting bras from my co-workers — and from the most conservative to the most liberal, they laughed and expressed indignation at your situation. Good luck! We’re with you!"

Another woman from California writes, "The perfect bra has eluded me, as demonstrated by the number of bras I’m sending you. Your bra ball will be the perfect resting place for them since my breasts were not."

Receiving the bras has been a learning experience for Duffy. "There is a huge variety in bras that are made out there. But I would say 90 percent of these have wire in them. Ninety percent. That’s part of why the ball is so heavy."

Gathering bras has also convinced her to get rid of her own bras. "I’ve since given up bra shopping. I don’t even wear one anymore. This project has gotten me totally off bras. I wear undershirts.

"All my bras are on here," she says, patting the ball.

Building the BraBall has also shown Duffy it’s not the light-hearted, funny sculpture she thought it would be.

"I think this project represents, in addition to women trying to support me, a tremendous amount of consumer frustration. It’s a big ball of dissatisfaction, angry consumer women’s dissatisfaction.

"I had no idea it would have this meaning. It’s become a whole entirely different thing than what I started with, which was just to protect my creative rights. I had no idea it would go international. I had no idea so many women would become incensed by the story and want to be a part of it."

Women who are interested in donating bras are not the only people to want to be a part of the story. Since the story of the competing bra balls broke in a follow-up column by Leah Garchik in the San Francisco Chronicle in January 2001, both Duffy and Nicolino have been deluged with calls from the media.

In just over a year, the BraBall and the Big Giant Bra Ball have appeared, together and separately, in more than 70 newspaper articles, television segments and radio pieces. The battle over the bra balls has even been the subject of a documentary film.

Duffy says all the media attention is understandable.

"It is a pretty juicy story. A man and a woman fighting over bras," she says, her voice dropping in tone and dragging out the syllables in the word bras. "It’s salacious. It’s sexy. It’s angry. It’s stupid. It’s silly. It’s funny. The idea of a giant ball of bras is funny to begin with. That was part of why I liked it."

What has emerged from these media appearances is that while the two bra balls may look similar, they — and their messages — are aimed at very different people.

Duffy and the BraBall stick to interviews with major newspapers, magazines and radio shows, such as People, USA Today, Ms. Magazine and ABC News. In almost every interview, Duffy mentions her efforts to raise money for the Komen Breast Cancer Foundation. She recently cut back on giving interviews about the ball because of her experience on a morning talk show for a Colorado radio program.

"They [the two hosts] didn’t want to talk about the BraBall or raising money for breast cancer awareness. They were two young guys who wanted to make jokes about the BraBall and what I was doing. I was really devastated by that interview. From now on, it’s only NPR for me!" says Duffy.

***

Nicolino and his Big Giant Bra Ball appeared on Howard Stern last year. The show featured Nicolino showing off his bra ball, along with two lingerie models who gave up their bras on air — at Stern’s behest — to support the cause.

The artists also take a completely different approach to public appearances and showings of their bra balls. Due to the size of the BraBall, Duffy has restricted public appearances of the ball to art and breast-cancer awareness events, such as the Roll-On or V-Day, a special benefit performance of "The Vagina Monologues" — the popular play about women’s experiences involving their vaginas — held in San Francisco this past February.

Size has not stopped Nicolino from showing off the Big Giant Bra Ball. Despite the Big Giant Bra Ball’s size, which is about 400 pounds heavier than Duffy’s BraBall, Nicolino tries to take it out on the road frequently. He travels in a 1963 pink Cadillac with Barbie dolls glued along the trunk. The Big Giant Bra Ball is strapped to a trailer hooked up to the Cadillac.

"You should see it, when we’re out on the road. It just bounces along on the trailer. It’s a real happy-looking thing."

Nicolino plans to take the bra ball on tour around the California coast this summer. He already has an appearance lined up.

"I just recruited five waitresses, who are these babes, right?, to ride in the pink Cadillac to do an event at Red’s Recovery Room (a bar in Cotati, California),"says Nicolino. "I’ve been invited to bring the Big Giant Bra Ball there for some kind of event. These women know where my project is coming from. They’re probably feminists. I consider myself a feminist."

The differences between the bra balls extend from the artists’ philosophies and promotional approaches to the way the bra balls are made.

To build the Big Giant Bra Ball, Nicolino, his daughter and a small crew of people strung chains of bras together. But unlike Duffy, who links her bras together by connecting the hooks of one to the eyes of another, Nicolino hooks each bra to itself, then threads another bra through the resulting circle.

"The bras are in circles, like links in chain," he explains. "The next bra links through it, and so on and so forth. And you have to stretch them tight around this ball to maintain the sphere. The tension is like a golf ball, a rubber band ball. If you had a 1,500 pound ball of rags that had no tension wrapped together, it would just kind of sag.

"Now that it’s turned into a giant bra ball, I still want to give the project away. But I want it to stay a bra ball, I want it to continue to grow. I want it to get a big pink semi instead of a pink Cadillac. Whoever gets it — whether it’s a group, an institution or a university — has to provide a grand salon for exhibition and provide access and a bra donation barrel."

Nicolino wants the ball to continue to grow. He hasn’t set any fixed size for the ball.

"I think if you’re a woman — or a guy who happens to have a bra — and want to donate it for whatever reason and be a part of the Big Giant Bra Ball, I think that’s where the project politics is. Making art, being art, being a part of the process. And at the same time, having some fun and making some interesting social commentary. I don’t see why you should have to cut that off. I see it growing forever and evermore."

Nicolino also envisions the ball traveling across the world, from the Bay Area to Ireland to Hong Kong.

The East Bay artist has been pleased with the public’s response to the Big Giant Bra Ball. In spring 2001, he says, he was funded by NBC to drive the bra ball from Vallejo to Los Angeles to be part of a television show.

"I was driving down the Grapevine [the stretch of Interstate 5 just north of Los Angeles] in the pink Cadillac with the trailer. The ball’s about 5 feet in diameter.… There’s Barbie dolls on the trailer, and their hair is flying. And they look like a gospel chorus. The bra straps are flying in the wind. and it’s exciting," he says.

"And I’m traveling down the Grapevine, and a big purple pick-up truck with a motorcycle in the back and a guy and his girlfriend in it are creeping up on me. He honks, and, as they get by me, she flashes me," he says, laughing.

"She mouths the words, ‘But I have no bra.’ So people have fun with it."

Last summer he took the ball out in San Francisco’s Gay and Lesbian Pride Parade. He recruited a few female volunteers to accompany the ball on its trailer.

"I gave one of them a bullhorn, and they would actively solicit bra donations from the crowd. At one time, it was a virtual hailstorm of bras. San Francisco was feeling pretty festive that morning."

But not all of the feedback he gets from the public is favorable.

"Sometimes it [the ball] generates anger. I take most of that as a compliment. These people are coming into the situation with a bunch of anger anyway. At least I’ve stirred up something in them, and it drew out some kind of response.

"I got death threats one year," he says. "People have called me a pervert on the streets on Edmonton, Canada, when I was walking around collecting bras on a train trip." That train trip, in 1992, was called "Whistlestopping Across America for Bras Across the Grand Canyon."

The bulk of the negative stuff, he adds, seems to come in the form of letters from religious fundamentalists.

"They write that their God is going to get me, like Sodom and Gomorrah. It’s like I’m stirring up some stuff in those folks that’s already there. It’s just crazy.

"I don’t think most people get it," he says. "I don’t think that most people in this country understand what conceptual art is. What I consider conceptual art is public involvement and attention to process."

Nicolino describes the philosophy behind the ball on his Web site.

"It’s about body image in western cultures, 200,000 breast implants each year, 8,000,000,000 Barbies, little people, the connection between self-esteem and loss of breast to mastectomy, five year olds with eating disorders and more. It’s about art."

***

There has been no final resolution to the battle of the bra balls. Due to a lack of time and money, Duffy has chosen not to pursue a lawsuit, and the lawyers have retired to their corners.

She is content to continue building her BraBall and raising money to fight breast cancer.

Nicolino seems delighted to take the Big Giant Bra Ball and the pink Cadillac out on tour.

And, even at the heart of the battle, each artist seems to have enjoyed his or her 15 minutes of fame and the wild ride they have taken with their bra balls.

As Duffy said at the BraBall Roll-On, "I don’t have any jokes to tell this evening. I thought this whole bra ball thing was a joke."

Extra: See the multimedia site for The BraBall Battle.