A New “Alice” Art Doll
Chilly winter weather can sometimes serve to inspire new works. I created a piece titled “Snow Day” on a snowy day when I wanted to use mostly materials from my indoor workspace. My latest, “Questioning Alice”, isn’t directly the result of cold weather nudging me indoors, however I was inspired by the idea of curling up with a good book on a cold day.
I created an earlier art doll sculpture titled “Paper Alice” a couple of years ago. Though not completely a paper creation, I incorporated elements pulled from Adventures in Wonderland in her design. This time I wanted to work as much with paper and paperclay as possible. I’ve found myself enchanted by altered book sculptures, and wanted to create an art doll that had that feel to it.
Questioning Alice
Anyone who has read the tales of Alice’s adventures may have noticed that the stories contain a lot of inquiries and decisions to be made. Playing with that concept, I created this art doll sculpture.
I created my Alice primarily of paper mâché, paperclay, and tissue paper decoupage. I sculpted the main figure over a wire armature. The mushroom I formed over heavy cardboard rolls, and a corrugated support under the top. Alice’s clothes I created through tissue paper layering and tissue paper decoupage. I added printed images of the classic Sir John Tenniel illustrations within the skirt’s top layers. Text from the tales “tattoo” her paperclay sculpted face. Questions asked to and by Alice were fit to spiral paths and then printed on to orange tissue paper. Layered within more orange tissue these form the mushrooms “questioning spots”.
This Alice will be showing up at the Hillsborough Gallery of Arts the last week of January for, “Now and Again”, the Gallery’s 10th anniversary celebration show. The show will celebrate the milestone and will include HGA’s current and former members.