Louie

Bonnie

Corgi

Sancha

Limey

Don't let it get you down.

Look at you! You're full of wonderful stuff!!!!

Count your blessings, your friends, your haywire brain cells, count the hummingbirds outside and the countries you haven't been to and

Stop scowling!

Come on now, you have options. . . the sky's you're oyster and

You are not stupid.

Look at you! You're full of wonderful stuff!!!

Green

Not a clock.

"maybe not, call the favor insurance.

Okay, Quinn?"

I mistakenly picked up some books on tape that are devotional--

"Laura didn't believe in the resurrection, she would take him to pieces with her probing questions"

And the tall dark, handsome man enjoys contemporary christian and his bible is well-worn.

I've had my fair share of people who look at this poor little heathen and wish and pray to Santa that I one day embrace the idea that after I die something besides nothing happens, and that has been plenty for my impressionable self, thinking, "Is the reason I just hit that bird that Jesus is trying to tell me to believe in him?" But. . . once I start a book, I just can't stop it, even if I have no idea what's going on. Like (I think) Kellerman's "Bad love". I had no clue, but I waited until they apprehended. . . somebody.

If you want to feel cerebral and adopt beady shiny eyes, read Donna Tartt's "The Secret History" or, better yet, listen to it unabridged, because the author reads it and she's got a wonderful strange voice for piggy, I mean Bunny.

LeRoy

LeRoy? Yeah, I guess it's LeRoy.

Lula

Ava

Bonnie

Frida

Latest Frida doll.

Frida

Latest Frida doll.

Pup

Bluebell

Devil Blue

Sandy

Purple

T-bone

dog clock

Puppy

I like the look on this dog's face. Sort of like, "oh, please".

Can You See

The little blue heeler?

The little homunculous?

Happy!

Lackaleeen

Is this not a striking similarity? Lackaleen has been in and out of my artwork for years. I guess I have never told her that she figures into my paragon of an aesthetic show of women's strength.

By the by:

http://www.thebreastcancersite.com/clickToGive/home.faces?siteId=2

Cate?

This one is based on a picture of my cousin Cate outta South Bend, Indiana, based, I say, based, on her, she's a fresh little posie, and this portrait seems like a depiction of a haggard Brittney Spears in 4-5 years. Sorry cuz.

The first doll

This is the first doll I ever made. I had been racking my brain trying to figure out how the whole thing works and then I learned the sew-then-turn-inside-out trick and I was on my way.

On this one, the 11 year-old me used a red nylon that had a run in it for the head, and lots of jazzy, cool fabrics for the costume.

My mother did not like that (#*$&%@) sewing machine, but she showed me the things I needed to know--how to gather, surge, threat the machine, and I am grateful for that. Fabric and thread are mostly harmless materials, yet so dynamic.

Doll. . . (parts)

Dolls: Why? I don’t know. But they are dolls, that’s the name that our history has come up with—a way to call something that looks like a female but 1/8 the size and not alive. . . So many forms: corn cob, fabric, puppets, marionettes (puppet master—why do we want to do a thing like that?) a doll of a twig, or plaster, moving dynamically, pulled to zero velocity—and, these dolls, the ones I make, are a certain thing. For some, they are not important, for others, they are special objects. The latter are the people who buy the dolls. They see her, they want her, they have to be with her. Have to have her be with them.
Imagination was a large contributor to my primitive childhood. Surrounded with blocks and pencils and paints and all of those games that you accrue during the duration, the babies held a more primordial reality suspension for me. Children always play what they imagine adult life to be (Fischer Price cash register, anyone? I didn’t have one, but god what I wouldn’t have given--perhaps as many as five (5) red coin shaped pieces of plastic- so real!), and for me, taking care of the plastic babies seemed important. We had a game where we went around rescuing children from unpleasant circumstances and using toilet paper to cast and recast their broken limbs.
And, memorably, I was once trying to make half a living selling these at craft shows, and I was going to college and living on the cheap so I spent some time making the ancestors of what I make now, and one night at about 12 AM, I had finished yet another doll. I sat back and stretched and looked at the fruit of my labor; row upon row of shiny pretty dollies! All staring at me from between the gaps in the weave of the muslin—an ARMY OF BEAUTIES! My minions!
And anyway, my point is that I love it that sometimes people really love these gals. That is neat—it makes me feel like a hippie. That they are assembled and weigh something, and that they are aesthetically interesting makes them an exceedingly easy pleasure to enjoy for people who are susceptible to sensory information, which we all crave to some degree. But really, type q people don’t givem a second look, type p people drag their whole shopping party down because they just have to look closer.
These, incidentally, are arms and bodies. Hanging out.

Dolls

Back to the Future

Marty's like, "Doc, what's happening, why are there two mes?" and "We have to make my parents get it on so I can exist." And Doc says, "where we're going we don't need roads."

"you must be extremely careful not to run into your other self."

--Doc Brown

PS. Aparently 2015 is going to be hella cool--(hella-ha!) hover cars and boards and jackets that dry themselves off and announce it in a robotic voice.

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