I have a small job to be the costume coordinator for an elementary school play in town. This is the school that my kids went to and I know lots of the people there, and have worked with the director when P. was in Wiz of Oz. 72 kids, probably 2 costumes each. The show, Snow White, goes up on June 10. Most of the job has to do with gathering up and sorting out what is available, and organizing the parents to do the sewing that might be needed. I needed to get going on this because I am leaving town tonight for WOW! Off to New Hampshire for doll immersion!
Category Archives: personal
vintage fabrics
I love working with the old fabrics in my collection. They each have a bit of history that I think about as I use them.
The white windowpane comes from a badly damaged dress, found in the basement of the house in Woodstock- I aquired it during the clean out. It was probably from around 1900- the corset age. It has some stains and damage, but I am working around and ignoring them.
The stiff white fabric came from my Mom’s stash. It was a brown sort of color on the top layer of the roll. I put it through the washing machine and it is fine- it is a cotton “organza” (? I think). It is stiff without starch- good for a petticoat. The polkadots came from a bag of fabrics that my neighbor gave me when they did a clean out. Judging from other things in the bag it was probably from the 60’s or early 70’s.
I am working on a dress for the gourd head girl… inspired by memories of a dress I had as a child.
I am 4 in this picture- it’s my birthday and I am holding a gift from my brother Paul- it is a helicopter that he made and I am very pleased with it. What doesn’t show in the picture is the large cloth red rose at the waist of the dress, the dotted swiss fabric- red dots on a white background, and the memory of the textures of the dress.
Here she is, trying on the dress in progress.
email conversations 5- on selling
email conversations 4- favorites?
My favorite doll-makers?
Helen Pringle, Susan Fosnot, Dorothy Heiser. I have a gallery with reference pictures- those are dolls that inspire me. http://www.cozy.org/pics/morgue
I am also inspired by- Tudor portraits and paintings of the Ashcan School in New York. “Realism” painting of the 20’s to the 40’s. Folk art portraits and flowers in the garden.
Right now I am working on a doll inspired by Angela Barrett’s illustrations in “The Hidden House” by Martin Waddell. Her illustrations inspire me.
email conversations 3- original?
Helen writes- I have a question for you…it relates both to art and to dolls..or any other creativity. Do you think it is possible to be original with anything
creative any more? Because I have looked at so many dolls, read so many
books, and seen so many, I feel sometimes that I don’t have an original idea
in my head when it comes to making them. Has that ever happened to you?
I wrote- My original dolls come from a tradition of old style dolls, but no one would mistake them for old. I think I make my newer dolls as a sort of family. They look friendly to me, beings I could know. I often find it hard to connect with people, maybe making my own people is easier? I don’t worry about “original” or derivative… I just do what I want to do. If someone thinks it is similar to someone else’s, great! tell me who it is so I can track them down and study their work! I have always found that being original is the worst thing you can do if you want to actually make any money… if buyers can’t fit you into a category, they aren’t willing to take a risk. This was true with my pottery.
email conversations 2- why dolls
Helen writes- How did we get to dolls? Why dolls? Can you answer that? I can’t. Why the
kinds of dolls we do? We’re both making vintage dolls. We have both done
funkier dolls in the past. Why vintage dolls? Why dolls at all?
me-
I know inside my head, I’m just not sure I can explain it.
Dolls? I have always been interested in figurative art- not at all by abstract. My brain works towards the figurative- when I look at abstract, I see figurative. I have always been most interested in depictions of people- in any art. Painting, sculpture, life-drawing. When I did pottery, my work was all about fitting a figure onto a 3-d space or form. How to put a figure inside a bowl, on a plate, around a cup. That was what drove my interest. I have always had a desire to make dolls in the back of my mind. I am sure I was thinking about it even when I was in Art school. I just never seemed to have the time to explore it and to be honest, the guts. Right before the fire, I was so sick of doing the pottery that I decided to take a sabbatical from it. I started painting and print-making. On my list of things I would explore was dolls. It wasn’t until after the fire that I tried my hand at it. Once I started, everything else dropped away.
I love the 3-d, the materials, the high level of craftsmanship that has grown for me. I love turning a flat piece of fabric into something with life! Every figure has it’s own set of problems that need to be worked out, so there are constant challenges. Plus, I collect stuff- and everything I’ve saved over the years can be used with the dolls. It seems to incorporate everything I am interested in, inspired by and curious about.
Vintage? I started out thinking about wooden dolls, like the wood artist mannequins. Also, I was working to dress two antique porcelain dolls of my MIL’s. I was taking every book about dolls out of our library, but mostly historical. I was and still am, very interested in the old copyright drawings for dolls like the Izannah Walkers and the Chase dolls. I never even looked at any patterns that other people were doing until I joined the doll club and then took a Gail Wilson Workshop. That was about a year after I started, and when I was getting very serious about it. I think that was when I found and joined VCD. I like making the vintage dolls because I feel like I learn a lot by using the original patterns- like reading a book in the original language or something! Sometimes I make the dolls I wish I could afford to buy. If I had unlimited money, maybe I wouldn’t bother! I don’t know… but I think I would because I am so curious about them. It takes me into their place somehow- When I was taking care of my in-laws in the fall of 2002, I was very focused on dolls of 1910 – 1925. It made me feel more connected to my MIL who had Alzheimer’s.
email conversations 1- why blog?
I’ve been having an email discussion with someone I’ve never met through one of my online doll groups. It has been an exercise for my brain…
about why I am blogging-
I am thinking a lot about connections… I worked in an Artist studio building for 11 years and then it burned down in 1999. Since then, I have been working at home. The real tragedy of the fire (for me) was the loss of community. I have found it to be irreplaceable. I have been searching ever since. One attempt to find a community has been my blog. So far it hasn’t generated anything, although I think it has been a useful tool for me- helps to have a place to record progress, and writing out ideas and thoughts help make me think more clearly. I am a bit writing phobic, so pushing myself is good. I tend to get WAY too isolated, working at home, alone. It is not good for me.
musing
I went to an opening today at Brickbottom Gallery. The show was paintings, and 3 out of the 4 artists were former tenants of the Kendall Center. Also, a lot of the other people attending the opening knew me from the Kendall Center. I was introduced several times as a potter… I don’t think of myself that way at all anymore. Also, when people ask what I am doing now, I can hardly even say- Dolls. When I do say it, I feel like it is almost a challenge… like OK- now say something.
What I hate most that people say- “dolls are always so creepy…” huh?
explain
I wrote this in a note to someone today…
I make the dolls because I love to. They are very craft intensive and that satisfies something very important inside me.