Hello everyone!
I have been pretty busy with summer and squeezing some projects in between. Here is my latest tutorial that I put together on Creative Paperclay®’s site on how to create a paperweight. I hope it inspires you to make your own, if so, please email me your creations if you would like for me to feature them here!
This is one of my latest pieces that I have been trying to carve out time to work on for the past couple of months. I’ve been wanting to expand on my pieces that addresses how women are perceived in society, in particular, women of color. I touched on it subtly in my last piece, but I plan to take this one full steam ahead and discuss some of the issues that women of color have to deal with on a day to day basis. This one is going to take a lot longer than I expected due to me wanting to get things just right.
This piece is something that has been on my list to create for a while, but I finally decided to put it in motion when I saw the open call for the “Where We Are” show at the Puffin Foundation in Teaneck NJ. I’ve been wanting to submit some work to them, but I haven’t had anything on topic with their shows since they are usually very political in nature. This piece called “Career Goals” is about the glass ceiling that women of color encounter when trying to advance in their careers. Working in the corporate sector, I’ve had the pleasure of picking up more job responsibilities without the proper title or a pay increase, and years after leaving a position, I learned that I was making $6,000 less annually than my male counterpart in the same title as me. This piece hits home in so many ways for me and I’m glad that I was able to figure out how to put it together. The busts and the men are made out of paper clay, and lambswool was used for the hair. With the men on top of the “glass”, there is a smaller one facing the opposite direction of the group, he represents the few minority males who get to climb the corporate ladder, but often work in isolation. I plan to make more pieces that explore these type of topics that affect people of color.
So here’s an update on this piece. He was originally going to be a commission for another artist, but that fell through by the time I was just about done with him. I decided to finish working on this piece since I don’t have too many male dolls under my belt. The biggest challenge for me with working on guy dolls is the styling, there’s very little room to hide imperfections. The clothing such as pants and shirts have to be pretty much tailored to fit, unlike a dress that can be loosely wrapped around and sewn in place. Another thing that I don’t bother too much with is the ears or the head shape. Most of the time I just put hair on my pieces, so getting the shape of the back of the head to be perfect and creating ears isn’t usually a concern for me. I am also terrible at sewing, so I find the notion of making pants extremely intimidating. With this piece I had to just face my fears, whip out the sewing machine, figure out how to thread it without help from mom, put my big girl pants on and get the job done. I must say that I love the way he came out, I need to get more practice in with creating more MALEndollies!
A cement sculpture that I colored with red acrylic paint. I’ve read in places that there are pigment dyes to color cement with, but I found them to be a bit expensive. I’m not sure if the paint that I used will break down the structure of the cement down the line, but I know that it didn’t hinder the cement curing process. I later added a layer of Bondo car body filler to test out the texture and see how it would perform outdoors. Seems to be fine so far and I love how smooth this stuff sands down. I will be posting more photos of my research as I find out more information!
I have been on a quest lately to try out stronger, weatherproof materials that I will be able to handle without using special equipment. In this round, I have been playing with cement and mixing it in a metal pot. I put a thin coat over a clay figure that I created for the sake of experimenting. I like the rough texture of it, but I would like to be able to smooth it out a bit more than I already tried to do here. My next material will be stucco as I have been reading good things about it and how it’s a bit easier to work with.
I finally decided to get all my ducks in a row and create a press kit! It’s so much easier to send one of these out than trying to track down of all the pieces such as the resume, bio and samples separately. It took me a while to decide what layout I would go with, but I decided to just keep it simple and clean with lots of white space as in my 4″x 5″ cards. Here’s a few of the pages that I’ve put together for it, I’m pretty happy with the way it turned out!
The doll that I am now working on is going to be based off of Joyce Carol Vincent, a 38 year old woman that was found dead in her apartment after 3 years in the UK. She was laid out in front of her television (that was somehow still on) with Christmas gifts that she had wrapped around her. They couldn’t determine the cause of death since her body was so badly decomposed and they could only identify her by dental records. I have so many questions when I think of this story but my main one is who was she bringing gifts to and why didn’t they look for her when she didn’t show up for the holidays? I can’t stop thinking about how easy it was for her to not be missed by friends and family. In the documentary about the story called “Dreams of a Life”, one woman said she just thought she was off somewhere having a better life than she was. She didn’t do drugs or drink and everyone that was interviewed spoke very highly of her. How unfortunate, for this beautiful young woman to die alone as she did. It just makes me wonder if something like this could happen today with all of this technology that we have. “Dreams of a life” is on Netflix if you would like to know more about this tragic story.
This is a doll that I am working on which I call “Devil in a Blue Dress”. I have a few finishing touches to add to her but I wanted to share these photos before I was done. My inspiration was Tim Curry as “Darkness” in the movie Legend.
Here’s one of my work in progress dolls for the new year. I’m not exactly sure where I’m going with this one but I’m definitely trying to veer off into a different direction. I was thinking about the movie Legend when I started making her. By the way, due to new internet regulation laws that are pending, I will be censoring my doll’s lady lumps from now on. I do not wish to be contacted by the authorities or sued for showing nude dolls on any of my posts. Sorry for the inconvenience….
Melandolly 