Fun With New Art Dolls

I made some new art dolls; a Maid Marian doll, a Hoochie Mama doll, and a Flower Child doll. They are made from shoe stretchers, collage, and a variety of hardware and kitchen items I picked up from yard sales and the local Habitat ReStore.

Adam and Eve and the Children of Eden

My kids were recently in a production of Children of Eden, a musical of questionable theology set roughly in the book of Genesis. Aside from the names of the characters, there is little that refers accurately to anything Biblical, but if you like theatrical interpretation, you may really enjoy it. Or not.

I am of the impression that pretty much all plays and concerts are about 3 songs too long. Even with the relief of an intermission, they always seem to surpass my attention span by the aforementioned 3 songs, and Children of Eden is no exception.

Children of Eden starts in the first act with the creation story, and somewhere along the way we end up at Stonehenge. [Hello? How did we get from naming animals to a ring of giant stones?] In case you are not up on your Old Testament, Stonehenge does not appear in the Bible.

By midway through the second act, which is the story of Noah and the flood, I was ready to start pitching all the characters off the ark and begging God to please let the musical end. I make a lousy thespian, especially in light of the two theatre degrees I have collecting dust in a bookshelf somewhere. Let me be clear, though; the people who put on the play did an admirable job; it is the musical itself I find tedious.

My most recent trip to the Habitat Restore, however, yielded some very inspirational bits of hardware, so I decided that an Adam and Eve sculpture would be an amusing task. Since I had been a slave to my children's rehearsal schedule for the last few months, I must have a bad case of Genesis on the brain.

I hope you like my doll sculpture. It, like the play, is suggestive of the apple eating contest between Adam and Eve that resulted in their both catching cold from the sudden draftiness one frequently experiences when camping out. Or something like that. You can look it up.

This is Dolls; We're Not Making Construction

I watched a bit of that new show on HGTV called Tough as Nails. You've likely seen the ads where Cindy Stumpo snidely declares, "This is construction; we're not making dolls." Why would I want to spend my time watching someone revel in their ability to be rude and abrasive to everyone they meet? It's an easy show to turn off.

I, on the other hand, am making dolls. My supply of shoe stretchers is holding up, so I took out another heap of them yesterday and got to work on some much needed art therapy. I had been meaning to make a bovine inspired doll for my friend, John, whose stickam site is much more engaging than an evening with Cindy Stumpo. John lives off the grid in a desolate area of Texas, and has longhorn cows that wander in and out of the premises all day. Evidently, they aren't his cows, but he doesn't seem to mind, and has become pretty good friends with one named Benita, who now has her own Facebook page.

This pair of bovine beauties is made from two shoe stretchers. The legs are spindles from a local textile mill, the facial collage is from some women's magazines from the 50's and 60's, and the various other parts are scavenged from the Habitat ReStore here in Greensboro, NC. They include various cabinet hardwares, hooks, nails, brads, leather strips, and wooden spoons.

The people over at Habitat were beginning to get curious over my frequent purchases of piles of apparently unmatched hardware jetsom and flotsam. So I shared this blog address with them. I hope they will be pleased, but there is no telling what people will really think.

Outsider Art Doll #2

This is the second art doll in the series. She's a little wacky, as evidenced by the split mouth and the spring pigtails. She's also pregnant, which may account for the cookie cutter belly. She has white porcelain knob breasts, and textile spindle legs. Her arms are made from 1/2 of a salad serving tong. The main body is an old shoe stretcher.

I'm having the distinct feeling that I'm going to have these things hanging around a long time, as they are gathering very little attention so far. Just what I need, more art.

Purchase shoe stretchers for your own dolls at MyShoeStretcher.com.

Outsider Art Doll #1

So, I did these 11 art dolls. Personally, I love to make stuff, draw stuff, create stuff. I can do it all day and night, and frequently do. I did these dolls, and decided to list them for sale on eBay, one per night for 11 nights. It seemed like fun. This is Doll #1.

The main body of the doll is an old cedar shoe stretcher. I collaged the face from pictures in some old Ladies Home Journals I got off of eBay. The eyebrow is made from some headless nails, and the hair is from copper tacks that have been wrapped in blue coated wire. There are a pair of tiny screw breasts and a porcelain knob "bun in the oven." The legs are made from spindles discarded from an area textile mill.

I enjoyed making these dolls, as I have no social life whatsoever, so doing art kind of compensates for that, but not really. In any event, you can check back here for Doll #2 tomorrow, and you can bid on Doll #1 on eBay right now. Go ahead. Really. Why wait?

Purchase shoe stretchers for your own dolls at MyShoeStretcher.com.

Illustration Friday: Pattern

“Art is the imposing of a pattern on experience, and our aesthetic enjoyment is recognition of the pattern.” - Alfred North Whitehead

I haven't done an Illustration Friday piece in a long time, but today's theme seemed appropriate to my latest project. Art Dolls.

My father passed back in January. The last several months have found my mother and I sorting through a mountain of my father's stuff. One of the things my father was bog on was shoes. He had over 300 pairs of shoes, which we have ebayed and consigned and given away. In the process, we pulled out dozens and dozens of these shoe stretcher things. I was packing them up when I was seized by an art idea, which usually assures that my own children will have as much stuff to sort through when I die as my mother and I have since my father's death.

I brought home several boxes of these shoe stretchers. A trip to the local Habitat Re-Store and Goodwill added lots of other odds and ends, and Michael's and Lowe's rounded out the project needs. So far, I am having a lot of fun cobbling together [no pun intended] these funky dolls.

They are built on wooden shoe stretchers with spindles from a textile plant for the legs. The eyes and mouth are collaged from Ladies Home Journal magazines from the 50's and 60's. There are also curtain rod finials, a wrought iron drawer pull, handmade nails, leather scraps, plastic and metal serving spoons, a cabinet hardware backplate, string, screws, matte varnish and tacks. I plan to eBay them starting next week. I hope you'll stay tuned.

So what is the pattern? For me, I am almost always drawing people, usually portraits. These dolls are kind of like portraits for me, albeit in an obvious departure from my usual work. So I suppose people are my pattern, the thing to which I continuously return, the thing that makes me feel connected.

Purchase shoe stretchers for your own dolls at MyShoeStretcher.com.