Leo (Zodiac stick doll series)

This one reminds me of several Leos I have known. Funny I never notice how crooked the facial features are until I photograph them. It's okay, I still wouldn't change them once they're made. Can't wait to dig in to the new technique for straight eyes, though. It will help a lot.

Is it possible to have too much inspiration, though? Today I pulled out an old watercolor I made to use as a guide for an art quilt I want to make for the Quilting Arts calendar challenge. Also, I feel after last weekend's play day that I want to teach. I never really knew this about myself, but I really loved teaching about dolls last week and something tells me I simply have to pursue that some more. That means finding venues and people to teach, of course, so I'm ready to do some legwork in that area. Finally, I just received Teesha Moore's Art and Life Zine (it's really wonderful --check it out) and got some really yummy ideas for embellishing my next doll. That's three major creative pursuits in one day. Yikes. The ideas are just percolating up from the bottom and I'm so excited that I'm distracted from my "regular" life. The Art and Life theme is definitely something I need to work on blending. Art and Life, making art and having a life, placing art into the life I've already made for myself, etc. There are many ways to think about this theme.

Excuse me while I indulge in something I'm fretting over right now. And this comes from always reading blogs which make me feel like I'm missing something when it comes to incorporating an "artful" life and my regular ol' life as mom/chauffer/school volunteer, etc. In my corner of the world, there seem to be some pretty hefty seams running through all of it, and it's uncomfortable when I can't even think about anything but finishing a doll I'm working on (or whatever it happens to be at the moment). This is an area I truly struggle to work through; how to fulfill all my other roles and still get my art made, or my blog written, or whatever. Not that there's a huge audience waiting with baited breath for the next installment. It's really just me with this HUGE desire to create all this stuff. It's truly difficult to reconcile some days.

On top of this pressing feeling of reality dragging me down, there comes an email from the school asking me to get started on another year of writing/marketing, etc. The volunteer work was bordering on oppressive toward the end of last school year and I'm just sick about starting in on another year of it. I feel like I have too much other important work to do. But alas, it's just another doll waiting to be made, or an idea for a workshop I want to teach, right? In my life here in mom-ville/good citizen-ville it's difficult to explain to the people who ask or need my time, the importance of backing down from all these responsibilities to make this art thing happen.

This is a crucial point in time for me. I'm feeling the need to get my priorities straight. Funny thing is I'm realizing I get no peace or happiness from praying about all this stuff. Nothing but silence and doubt. I'm in a funk.

Would love some kind of breakthrough.

Book Club Lady

I thought this one would be a boy doll, but as soon as I started painting the face I realized I was mistaken. Must be the eyelashes!

In the post below, mine is the second from the right, in the front.

Stick Doll Play Day

Some members of the Austin Fiber Artists got together yesterday to play with fabric. We try to do this every other month or so. Yesterday I got to plan our play day, so of course I chose to make a stick doll. Yesterday was interesting because I've always wondered if it would be fun to teach doll making. Turns out it was! And the results were fabulous, as you can see!

I posted more play day pictures on flicker under stick dolls. Check them out here, if you like.

I learned a lot, too:

About teaching:
1. People really appreciate a supply list so that they can bring their own stuff.
2. Needle sculpting is not as "intuitive" as I thought. I need to come up with an established formula for sculpting and/or provide a stuffed ball to practice on.
3. Everyone comes to a project with different expectations and ideas. (You'd think that would have been obvious to me!)
4. Some people want to buy supplies they use and are introduced to in a class, especially supplies they haven't used in the past, or those commonly used in their particular area of expertise. For example some fabric dyers wanted hemostats, and one doll maker wanted practically every tool I had brought.
5. If we'd have had 8 hours we could have done all the embellishing we needed to finish our dolls.

About doll making:
1. Eyes:
a. Close-set eyes make the nose bunchy when you needle sculpt it. Allow for extra space between the eyes.
b. To lessen the bulgy effect of the eyes, do not run the same thread through the eye and the eye socket. This will also help with directing the eye placement so the doll is not cross-eyed or wall-eyed.
c. Painted eyelashes look great with my eye beads (thanks, Diane!)
2. I'm inspired to try some different noses that the ones I usually make. A lot of people didn't like their noses, but I loved all the new shapes I saw!
3. Mary brought a pre-dyed green piece of Rayon and Jean brought a pre-dyed orange piece of bamboo to use. Their dolls turned out wonderful...I must try different materials and colors!

Anyway, the above stuff is meaningless to most people, so sorry, but I'm just really excited to try some new things. I thought I was tired when I left the play day, but I ended up going home and playing some more with my doll. I repositioned the eyelids and finished embellishing her. I thought it was going to be a guy doll, but no! As soon as I started painting the face I saw this very cute bookish lady peering out. I'll post her picture later on.

The ladies who came out to play were wonderful, all. Helpful with ideas, friendly, focused, and eager to make something new. They were all cool with the doll they made. I think they are all fabulous -- and their dolls, too.

It's all good. We increased the doll population on the planet in six short hours.

Dolly's out there somewhere...

...pushing some awesome looking clouds into the Austin area. This has been the summer for breathtaking skies in the Hill Country. The last time I remember clouds like this was 7 years ago, the summer after Willie was born. It was hot of course and we had lots of visitors that summer in to see the new baby. My Aunt Sharon in particular (visiting from Nebraska) oohed and aahed over the Texas skies, and at the time I didn't think much of it, being only a couple of years new to the area and still in love with the newness of its beauty, the hills and flowers and creeks and lakes, not to mention my three babies who took much of my visual attention those years. But ever since, I keep my eyes on the skies to see if I can see what she saw on her visit.

This summer I see it. Not much rain here, but the most amazing unreal clouds passing through the sunshine. They don't even provide any shade as they pass by. The sun beats down through them. And they scoot and curl and move, too, offering a different view each time I peer out the back door. I have a file just for cloud photos now.

These are Hurricane Dolly clouds today. I hope we get some rain from the storm, since our little Bee Creek has been dry since spring and the lake is too low for much fun from the shore (fishing, swimming). But we can be thankful the damage at the coast is relatively minimal.

Summer Breakfast

I wish I could say I had this (and only this) lovely bowl of fruit for breakfast. I'm afraid there were a few bites of chocolate chip pancakes in there, too. The mornings have been gorgeous, in spite of afternoons of 100+ degrees. Thank goodness for the heat, though. What would Texas be without hot summers?

These days a typical day is either sitting by the pool or just staying in somewhere with the air conditioning blasting -- home, movie theaters, Chuck-E-Cheese's (kids' pick). I try to stagger our indoor activities with outdoor activities. The golf and tennis, if sports are on the radar, need to take place in the mornings. Sometimes the kids ride their scooters around the driveway. In the evenings we've been playing a lot of ping pong in the garage. (I know I could be good at ping pong if I didn't love white wine on summer evenings) Luckily we all enjoy arts and crafts, so we can always pull out paints and glue. We have a couple of friends over each week, sometimes ending in sleepovers, and late nights watching movies. Sometimes we don't even get a movie started until 9:30/10:00 at night -- definitely on a summer schedule! Of course then there are always video games and computer games. One of the better ones is "Crazy Machines", where you have to complete certain tasks using an assortment of objects the professor chooses for you, like rope, pulleys, weights, ramps, explosives. My boys get into some heated exchanges over how to go about accomplishing each job. Luckily I can usually manage to ignore all that, although sometimes it's necessary to just kick all the kids out and turn on the sprinklers and drag out buckets. I love summer.

I just got off the phone with a friend who told me we have only 33 days left until school starts. Now there's a sad thought.

Fallen Astronaut

Now this is an image that has captured my attention since the first time I saw it in a book at my friend's place. I'm not surprised that a doll is the art form designated to represent the fallen astronauts from the various space missions in our history. My friend sent me a link about this controversial little 3" figure, which was left on the moon without NASA's permission. The artist Paul Von Hoeydonck made several hundred replicas to sell, but after negative publicity he decided not to. The top image is an ad from July 1972 issue of Art in America, advertising the sale, which never took place. (Wonder where they all are.)

I'm excited to give a short talk about doll making to the Austin Fiber Artists tomorrow evening, and I want to include a short history of the human need to leave its mark in the representation of a doll, as on the moon. This doll is supposed to represent all the fallen astronauts in the history of space exploration. A faceless genderless doll such as this shows the range of fallen astronauts, but also the human populace which calls earth its home. Just like the clay fertility goddess figures found in excavated sites of the earliest human civilizations, this doll lying on the surface of the moon commemorates a particular group of people for whomever might find it there. Dolls exemplify our humanity. We utilize them to call forth "who we are".