Bad Bunny Humor.

There might come a day when the bunny bites back.

Isn't folk art fun?  Hope your day is full of lovely Spring surprises and no vengeful chocolate bunnies.

Miss Martha

I guess it's no secret that I love dolls.  (No!  REALLY?) I make them, collect them, and enjoy learning and teaching all the various aspects of them.  I belong to a group called MAIDA (Making Antique Inspired Dolls and Accessories, I think) where doll makers share their techniques, challenges, and progress.  One of the doll makers I've met through this site is Martha Bishop, who lives in Mississippi and makes wonderful folk art dolls.  She posted some really big dolls last year, and one... just got me.

If you have ever collected anything, you know what it is to exercise restraint. The talent and variety represented by MAIDA doll makers alone is enough to fill a doll cabinet.  But there is only so much space in a house, and only so much money in a budget.  A collector must--if she is not to end up penniless and featured on "Hoarders"--acknowledge these limitations.

But I wanted that doll!  Too bad, Jan, that doll is spoken for.  Not willing to give up, I asked Martha: can we trade?  Will you make me a doll like that Big Girl, in return for one of my Izzie-babies?  She said yes, and adopted the wee Izannah Walker doll below, dressed in yellow.  She called her Janet.  We're so original with these names aren't we?
 

And yesterday, Miss Martha (a.k.a. Gloriana) arrived--all 27" of her.  I am silly over this doll, and consider her to be a fine work of American Folk Art.  Sometimes you just have to tell the collection restraints to move over, because this one is going to fit, somewhere.

I hate to do this, but...

I've been adamant for years that I not ever have the Spam-Bot word verification.  It bugs me to have to decipher one on somebody else's blog, so I didn't want anyone to have to tussle with it on mine.  But over that last several months, I've been getting spammers almost every day, so I have to give in.

To anybody who hates the word verification thingy, I sincerely apologize.  But it's the only thing I can think to do that will keep the comments section clear of spam.

Izannah Walker Dolls!

Given the craziness that has been our life over the last six months, it's no wonder I haven't had a lot of time to work on dolls.  But it just occurred to me (uh, yeah, this living in the margins thing again) that I only have three weeks until we close on the new house and have to move!  Now I'm stoked about that, but when you boil it down, that's really just over two weeks of doll making time, to fit in and around everything else.

Oh my.  What is me who said, "...where complacency turns into planning"?  I'm a little short on both time and planning at this point, but that's okay.  I work well under pressure.  Ahem.

Thanks to my friends Edyth and Dixie, I have quite a few dolls to be working on. I've made a good start... lots of little heads and torsos, arms and legs all cut & sewn.  The fun part is the sculpting, but I am forcing myself to do the less-fun part, so I don't put it off. 

I asked Edyth if I could share pictures she took of her dolls, and that Dixie featured on Izannah Walker Chronicles.  Edyth has two lovely antique Izannahs, and I've had the privilege to meet both of them.  They are so different from one another, and yet the basic Izziness (technical doll maker's term) is abundantly clear in each.  

Edyth's antique Izannah Walker dolls

Edyth wanted some artist dolls to keep her antique girls company, so she now has two (at least): a boy and a girl.  The boy on the left and the girl on the right are the ones I made, and I have to say it's been a fun time learning from these originals up close and in person.  I have gotten a chance to measure and study, to photograph and compare.  So much can be absorbed by the hands that the eyes just can't get to...there's a visceral satisfaction in holding one of these babies that is hard to describe.

Soon I will have several Izannah Walker type dolls for sale--small 16" ones and larger 19 to 20" ones.    Some of them are already spoken for, and some will be headed for Ebay to find new homes.  If you would like one before it goes on Ebay, email me.  For now--break's over and it's time to get to work.  Okay, it's not really work, but we won't tell anybody that just now.

My reproduction dolls are the ones on either end...they all seem happy together.

A Time of Transition.

I once read that life is most interesting at the margins, where one thing is busy changing into another.  Where prairie turns to forest, where high school turns to adulthood, where complacency turns to planning.  That's where we're at right now, in that last bit, and it is indeed interesting.  We have a buyer for our house, and have begun the purchase process on a new one.

A Loquat tree at the new place!  Japanese Plum.  I've studied up...they're supposed to be delicious!

Well, not new...it was built in 1965 but the current owner has done a wonder of renovations and we'll be happy to live there.  We will transition in the form of scaling down--in the square feet of the house and in the size of the lot.  We currently live on a country lot of 1.3 acres and are moving to a city lot of .25 acres.  The changes coming around require lots of shifting...of furniture, of landscape dreams, of traffic patterns.  But we're ready.

Iris: "Dauntless"  We'll be starting (another) new iris bed!

Having moved fifteen times in eighteen years has us a little too nomadic, and four years in the same place is odd.  This moving feels like waking up, stretching, yawning, and warming up those muscles that have gone unused for a while.  But it's all good.  We seriously hope to get used to stationary living...as much as we make fun of ourselves--the last three houses we've bought were supposed to be "forever" houses.  Not so much.  This time we're not calling it a forever house, but more of a "Ten Year House", and are willing to see what happens.

I've been busy saving starts of plants all around, herbs, perennials, vines, etc.  Our cannas, the ones we have dragged around for almost twenty years...yes, they're going too.  I've joined a garden site that has no end of expertise and camaraderie, and threatens to overwhelm me in Garden Fever.  But it's all part of the transition, and I'm not going to fight it too hard.  I mean, why should I?  A new yard!  New plans!  Roses!

Saving seeds...one great thing about the garden website I've joined...they all trade plants!

The effects do tell on me once in a while, taxing my energy reserves.  So today I took advantage of a quiet Sunday afternoon...took a nap.  Of course Willie and Schultz took advantage as well...and roosted on me while I slept.  That's okay...I like to think they were conveying a little energy to me for the upcoming weeks of hard work, painting, moving furniture, and alllll that digging of new flower beds.

Life really is pretty interesting in the margins.
Where are the margins in your life, and how can you make the best of them?

Creative Withdrawal...or, Having An Art Attack.

Last November, after our Thanksgiving trip to AZ, we started in on the house, getting it ready to sell.  It wasn't in bad shape, it just needed to be decluttered & depersonalized, because when we live in a house, we really LIVE in it.  So all the stuff was packed away, the bright colors neutralized, and (this was the hardest part) both of our studios put into storage.

Big mistake.  I did leave out paints and paperclay, a little lace and some sewing thread.  But I put away all the fabric.  Box after box of fabric.  Yeah, someday I'll enroll in a program for fabri-holics, but for now, let's say I wasn't really thinking things through.  It's easy to stand in the midst of chaos, knee-deep in boxes and packing tape, and think "Oh, I won't really need this stuff until, what, next June?  July?"

Aside from the fact that I have several requests for dolls to sew, stuff, sculpt, paint, and dress...there is the move itself.  I'd forgotten what Nesting in the New Place does to my creative mind.  It's NOT a matter of hauling furniture from one place to another, and plugging in the toaster.  When we move, I always have an Art Attack.  Sometimes several.  Here are some examples from over the years:

Painted child's rocker...it has bugs all over it. 

A box with a Celtic Green Man...my Mother In Law keeps cloth napkins in it now.

My daughter's room, the year she wanted clouds.  And vines.  And butterflies.

The entryway of our house up in North TX.  Note the painted footlocker, lower right.  Ancient and rickety, but colorful!  I painted the urn and grapes while the hubby was on an errand for building supplies.  He didn't make me paint over it.

I often pull down closet doors and install curtains.  This was my son's room; textured and painted to look like a dungeon.  Not my fault...it's what he wanted!

A purple hall closet curtain, and the entertainment center my hubby & I built together.  I had a blast carving the knotwork down the front. 

This was Florida, and I'd been bitten by the colors on the beachfront boardwalk.  Hubby wasn't thrilled about a pink kitchen.  I'm wasn't thrilled about that awful picture of myself.  But the table on the freezer behind me was fun to paint and sold at a local art fair.  We were in base housing, so I had to put it all back to white before we moved.

Lady Sydney, on our bed.  She loved towels warm out of the dryer.  Phil made the headboard and I painted it.  The Cat in the Hat was a gift, and I made the sock monkey (who is in storage and whom I miss a lot)!

When we bought land in New Mexico, I found this chalk-ware lady...so I made her a little shrine-house.  Phil still shudders when he thinks what an awful woodworking job I did...but the painting was fun.  See the orange and purple shed off in the distance (upper left)?  We've left a trail of sheds from Florida to Montana and everywhere in between.  Now it's time to built another one at our new place!

Sooooo, we've found a house, and have it under contract.  Supposed to close toward the end of April.  Before we found it, I stayed busy enough, what with the yard work and the house work, but with a new house on my mind, dreaming has turned into a tortured sort of planning, and I MUST PAINT SOMETHING NOW OR I WILL DIE!!!

I must analyze the new-house spaces for best use, repurpose (repaint?) dressers, chairs, tables, etc. for their new rooms and new uses.  Sew new curtains and maybe crochet funky tie-backs with beads and buttons and whatever.  And that doesn't even count the possibilities of a brand new yard!  Oh the bird houses and wind chimes and silly garden whiz-gigs that need making!  But the studio is packed!  The furniture has to stay as it is while we sell this house!

Oh my.  I need a creative outlet, or I really might explode.  What a mess that would make...and here I am trying to keep this place tidy.

Yesterday I cut out fabric for twenty dolls, and if buyers don't like our house a little "busy" with ongoing projects, well then too bad.  Better a prospective buyer sees a clothesline of painted doll parts than me, hunkered in a corner, muttering with a mad gleam in my eye, like Ophelia counting paintbrushes instead of broken flowers.

You might ask, "But I thought you stored the fabric?"

Well...what're a few more yards in the grand scheme of things?  The rest of it can wait til I can get to it...and it won't go to waste, I promise.