Tag Archives: copper

Art Doll with a Doll, and a WIP

Art Doll with a Doll

This week I completed Art Doll with a Doll. This piece reminded me that once you finish a piece she then belongs to the viewer.

seated art doll figure of doll with doll

Art Doll with Doll

The reason I say this, is that I posted her image on some of my social media sites, and almost instantly received a message to purchase the “mother and baby” piece. I have to admit it took me second to realize that the writer, a soon to be grandparent, meant the doll I had just posted. This pair is now reserved for that viewer, but she will first appear in my gallery feature show in May with a red dot on her label.

Work In Progress (WIP)

Creating for a gallery show, I always like to push myself to stretch a bit. My recent experimentation with a polymer clay face for my doll “Snow Day”, intrigued me. I purchased a package of paperclay. I have been wanting to try this air dry clay on an art doll for a while now. I will be working metal into the final composition of this piece , but her beginning is a bit different from my usual forged copper face and hands. The rest of the body construction for this art doll will follow my same form of a wire skeleton with padding and clothes sewn on.

paperclay head

head and hands drying

I chose paperclay after thinking about my first figure sculpture to cross into the art doll realm, No Rag Doll. That doll as you may recall was a stuffed doll with a wire skeleton and a brass foil sculpted face. With her inner support to hold herself upright, she was a rag doll that wasn’t floppy at all. In using paperclay I am playing with the idea of a paper doll, but since she is rendered in three dimensions she is nothing like the flat counterparts from which I am drawing inspiration. Her connection to paper also stems from a literary catalyst, but I’ll share more about that when I post her completed images.

Art Doll Getting Ready

Where is this art doll off to?

This week I completed “Getting Ready”. This art doll is obviously on her way to somewhere very important, but not quite set to go. I’m sure she’d like to have her dress ready too, but her undergarments are pretty interesting all on their own. Besides, her attention seems to be firmly concentrated on her hair at the moment.

Getting Ready

I may change the mirror she is holding a bit. It is one of those details that you need to look at before you feel it is exactly what you want for a piece. Sometimes time and distance are the most useful items you have in your toolbox. I can’t even recall the number of pieces I’ve changed or even completely reworked before they appeared in the gallery. A couple of the dolls that will appear in my feature show in May are very different beings now compared to what they were a few months earlier.

back view of Getting Ready

As you can see, Getting Ready is tightly laced up, and even has a little bit of boost for her bustle. I worked more metal through her shoulders and bust line and defined her waist with soft sculpting techniques. These shapes are created through costuming with most of my other art dolls.

I’m still left wondering where she and her striped stockings are off to next.

Art Doll and Her Balloon

Art Doll Balloon

The art doll to emerge this week from my studio is this whimsical figure grasping the string of her balloon. I like working on pieces in which I strive to capture movement. It is easier to have a sculpture posed in a static attitude. With this doll, I wanted the viewer to feel if they could witness the very next second, the doll would either rise off her one foot, or be running after the balloon being carried by a breeze.

Some pieces take form as you are working on them, sometimes surprising you with the end result. This piece was very much the opposite. She was fully formed in my mind and sketchbook just begging to come to life. The only detail that surprised me was how I created the balloon. Originally, I was going to fashion it out of something like paper mâché, but then I found the blue checkered fabric in my stash, and it spoke so strongly to the pattern I chose for her dress. I knew I had to sew it as well.

Her red “leather” Mary Jane shoes took me on a little learning journey. I find I simply love creating the footwear for these figures. I helped my process of creating the patterns for each by doing a bit of Internet seachring on shoemaking itself. Watching footwear pattern and construction videos during a gallery shift provided fresh insight. Most helpful was seeing how shoe designers use tape covering their shoe form to create their initial patterns.

I think I might have found my image piece for my next show card.

Art Doll Cometh

Snow Day

“Snow Day” is an art doll sculpture born from a string of snowed in days. Normally, each of my figures starts life in my metal studio where I hammer a face out of copper stock, and forge hands from copper tubing and wire. A couple of abnormally cold and snowy weeks kept my garage metal studio a bit cooler than I like to do this small scale metal forming.

During one of these days I remembered I had a stash of polymer clay. I decided to create a face that could be stitched on to a bit larger scale cloth doll. This doll body I created in the same manner as my very first figure sculpture to cross into art doll territory, “No Rag Doll”, with a soft sewn body over a posable wire frame.

The nordic theme of the doll came out of the weather on the days in which I created her, and the addition of iridescent clay into her face that lends a slightly frosted appearance. I had all of the fabrics and trims used on hand in my studio, and she came together quite smoothly, but seemed somewhat incomplete when I finished her clothing.

I noticed that this art doll could stand unaided. I had enhanced the ability to balance for several of my other art dolls with the addition of a staff, or walking stick. “Snow Days” snow shoes and ski poles were born from that bit of brainstorming.

“Snow Day” will most likely stay in my studio until my feature show at the end of May, though I may be convinced to bring her to the gallery earlier while she still matches the season.

“Art All Around” and a work in progress

I shared my “Cirque III” hanging art doll a few weeks ago, but here she is again.

Cirque III

The show I created her for “Art All A Round”, is now installed at the Hillsborough Gallery of Arts. This unique group show is hung quite differently. We are in the middle of a floor project in the HGA feature gallery, in fact I spent this morning along with several of my gallery partners doing demolition on the old tile floor. Since the feature gallery is not available, we hung the art for “Art All A Round” all around the gallery. These pieces featuring circles, and round themes are specially labeled. We have also generated a key with images of all the pieces for visitors to use as a guide map, or perhaps treasure hunt is more accurate. The opening reception for “Art All A Round” is this Friday from 6-9pm.

While I’m on the subject of my pieces for our group themed shows at HGA I thought that I’d share a bit of work in progress images of my piece for next month’s show. Each February for three years now we have paired up with one of Hillsborough’s many talented authors for our “It’s All About the Story” show. This year we are working with Lee Smith. I’m trying a few different things this year. Here’s a peek…

Armature of work in progress

Tree skeleton covered in burlap

Fabric Mâché, paisley tree?

I’ll share the rest next month.

Holiday Treats and a Circle

I have mostly been busy creating items for the gallery for the holidays the past few weeks. Along with new art doll sculptures this includes a few extra jewelry creations, and several types of ornaments. Even though these are smaller pieces that I make several of at a time, I do hand craft each as a distinct original piece.

ornaments and ornament cards

I think that my “ornament cards” illustrate this best. The small metal repouseé panel that is on each starts out as a piece of blank tooling foil. I sketch a design on each with a dry erase marker, and then use a variety of stylus tools to shape the design front and back to create a relief sculpture. A sparkly card stock backing is then attached by edging the two panels together with metal foil tape. With the addition of an eyelet, a hanging ribbon, and attached to a card it becomes both a greeting and a gift.

I also forge copper stars and hearts from copper stock, and pierced aluminum. These are finished with a variety of found objects from my steampunk-y materials stash.

This year I wanted to add an ornament with a nod to my art dolls. I created the little “snowflake dancers” you see in the photo. Each starts out with a wooden bead and a couple of pieces of twisted wire. Brads for eyes, tinsel hair, a wrapped yarn leotard, and skirts of copper and tulle complete these miniature hanging dolls.

My latest art doll is also a hanging piece. Following our first ever Juried art show at the Hillsborough Gallery of Arts (more on that in a couple of weeks); HGA will host “Art All Around” in January. This gallery group show will feature works that in turn feature circles.

Cirque III

My piece for the show is “Cirque III”, she is the third in a series of aerialist dolls fashioned in the style of a “cirque” type circus. This doll I purposely balanced and positioned so that while hanging, the slightest breeze or air movement will cause her to move in a circular plane. This of course made photographing her all the more of a challenge, but I do like the effect. She will be in the gallery starting the last week of January.

Mermaid’s Song

Mermaid Song

Mermaid Song is my newest art doll. For an earlier mermaid doll I forged an all copper tail. I decided allow materials to drive creation with this siren of the deep. I source some materials for my work at a local “creative reuse” center known as the Scrap Exchange. Upholstery samples provide a great inspiration starting point. Within a stack of faux-leathers I had several colors of materials with a dappled pattern impression. They reminded me of fish scales, and called to be part of a new mermaid doll.

I tried some other new things with the construction of this sculpture. Along with my last, “Barre-ing Degas”, this doll has hands created from a narrower diameter copper tubing. I think this brings the hands into better proportion with the rest of the doll. It does require I work to an even more exacting tolerance when cutting fingers in the end of the tube I flatten to form the palm and fingers. Another new technique I employed was making a small sandbag to include within the doll to ensure that she would sit up while still having her head tipped back singing.

Mermaid Song will be off to the gallery soon.

“Barre-ing” Degas

My latest art doll is “Barre-ing Degas”, and yes, she is a steampunk riff on one of Edgar’s Degas’ dancer pieces titled “Dancer at the Barre.” I like the behind-the-scenes casual feel of that painting. The young dancer pictured is not performing some grand athletic move, or spectacularly costumed. She is instead relaxed against the barre and appears to be contemplating the angle of turn out of her foot. You get the feeling that you are looking at a candid photograph rather than a posed composition.

Barre-ing Degas

My figure has a few more bells and whistles (gears and rivets, actually) in her attire, but in her defense, she is much smaller and needs to work harder to attract attention.

Where Did That Post Go?

As I was adding some images to my Art Doll page, I noticed that the post being shown as my most recent, was from a couple of weeks prior. My last post “A Pair and Repair” was back in the draft folder. Now, I’m not sure how that happened, but I’m guessing it occurred somewhere between using a laptop to do one thing, a tablet another, and updating in between the two. So, I decided to share the new piece from this week, and re-share last week’s too.

This is Nobody’s Fool, and you can see she is just that. Stitching the hat was the greatest challenge with this art doll. I actually made two, as the first wasn’t quite where I wanted it to be.

Nobody’s Fool

Last Week, I shared “Future Thoughts”. It is the second in a series. This piece takes the concept of looking forward while keeping an eye on the past (“Driving in Reverse”, the first in the series) a step further and is concentrating firmly on the future.

Future Thoughts

The second art doll from last week was “Fly Girl”, decked out in her brass goggle steampunk finest.

Fly GIrl

I also gave an update on my three out-door Garden Dolls at the UNC Botanical Gardens show. Two required some minor repairs, as overly interested visitors tried to remove parts and pieces. One of the three, “Tend” has already sold and will be going to a new home when the show closes.

Three Dolls Going to a Garden Party

If you been following along with my progress on some outdoor figure pieces, your patience can finally be rewarded. I will be installing three “garden dolls” at the UNC Botanical gardens tomorrow in the annual Sculpture in the Garden invitational show. But, before they take the trip to Chapel Hill, here’s a few shots of them in my own garden.

Sow

Tend

Gather

The reception for the Sculpture in the Garden show is Saturday from 4:30 – 7pm. The show will be on display throughout the fall. There is always a wide variety of media, styles, and sizes of work represented.

Wartski Art Dolls and Sculpture

Art dolls and mixed media sculpture