Joseph Schneider is an artist who builds very big sculptures out of very small pieces. Next on his agenda, a massive Gothic cathedral constructed entirely out of Barbie dolls — thousands of them. As curious as the project might sound (not to mention ambitious), the emotional story behind Schneider’s undertaking might surprise you.

Schneider and his wife moved to Oregon from New York on September 11, 2001, the same morning the terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers of New York's World Trade Center took place.

"We had nothing unpacked, and just started getting phone calls from our friends in New York… [We were] not able to visualize anything," Schneider recalls.

Later that day Schneider got his first visual impact of the fallen towers — and it didn’t come from a television. While shopping at a thrift store, Schneider stumbled across an isle stacked with rows and rows of naked Barbie dolls, their plastic bodies all piled on top of each other. Suddenly, he pictured the massacre in New York City and, disturbed by the image, had to leave the store immediately. But the picture stuck with him.

“There’s a phrase that I grew up with, that a true church is made up of the body of all of us. And it’s a living church; it’s not made out of stone," Schneider explains. "I had this vision in my head of the dolls, make a church out of the dolls, and the dolls are stand-ins for us."

At first, Schneider found the idea shocking and he didn’t want to go through with it. But as he thought about how America was going to recover from the tragedy, he felt a responsibility as an artist to try and build the cathartic cathedral.    

Years later, Schneider is in the initial stages of constructing the Doll Cathedral. He has completed an elaborate small-scale model that will serve as inspiration for the larger structure. When finished, he estimates that the size of the cathedral could reach up to 60 feet tall with two large towers, by 30 feet wide.

Not only is the scale of the project enormous, the expense of the materials is fairly prohibitive. He has slowly begun to collect rebar for the skeleton of the building, but he will need thousands of Barbie dolls to fill in the form. Although he has collected hundreds of dolls already, Schneider will rely heavily on donations to get the rest of what he needs.

Schneider admits that he may not ever finish the project. "We'll do our best,” he says with hope. One small piece at a time.

This video was filmed by Greg Bond and edited by Tracey Whitney.

Learn more about Joseph Schneider on Oregon Art Beat.