Places my dolls have been featured
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!
Hello everyone! Here is the second in the series of my monthly blog tutorials! Head on over to Creative Paperclay®’s blog to see how this piece was made, or click here for the direct link to the tutorial!
I had a very unfortunate situation leading up to my last workshop. There was a writer who decided that she would “share” my content with her community, but never asked my permission or even contacted me beforehand. She took my blog posts, images, unrelated personal work biography with previous job titles and assignments, patched it all together and printed it out in her local newspaper that boasts a reach of 10,000 in Harlem and the Bronx. I found out from a friend of mine who saw it in a building she was working in and sent a photo of it to me. At first I was a bit flattered, but then I realized that she copied and pasted word for word from both of my websites and passed her story off as an interview that she never conducted with me. The images weren’t even credited to the photographer that took them, and now a bit of my personal information which I would have never disclosed for this story, is out there. If asked ahead of time, I would have totally agreed to speaking with her and giving her permission to use my content, but the opportunity was never presented to me.
I understand Google is a living and breathing thing and that we can discover all the information that we could ever dream of with it, but should we compile everything we find on a person and distribute it throughout their neighborhood without their permission? I think not, and it’s quite alarming when you think of it. And if you are wondering, yes I did receive an apology but it was more like a sorry, not sorry type, with an emphasis on trying to spread the word about my workshop over respecting copyright laws and my privacy. I enjoy sharing what I’m doing with everyone, but this experience has been a real eye opener for me. As a result, I will be putting even more limitations on what I do share online. Be careful out there folks!
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!
After about a year of planning, the Bronx Artist Documentary Project has finally made it’s debut at The Andrew Freedman Home this past Saturday September 13th. The project consisted of 30 photographers documenting 80 artists as they created artwork. I had the opportunity of being the only crossover artist to be on both sides of the lens. I was documented for a period of five sessions as I worked on various projects and I photographed three other artists while they worked in their studios. It was a great experience to meet other artists in the neighborhood and see how they began and ended their creative process. It was rather easy for me to document them, but I found it quite difficult for someone else to document me. I was very aware of the camera and tried to do everything in my power to make sure that my surroundings wouldn’t be as messy as they usually are. Overall, it was quite a bumpy ride but I think that we can all say that we’ve made a few new connections along the way 🙂
I had a wonderful time at my first Two-Person show in Soho! It was great to see my name in vinyl letters on the wall and I had plenty of friends show up to support me. I also got a chance to meet the wonderfully talented creator behind the whimsical AstoNuts stuffed creatures. His creations are massive and must be seen in person to fully appreciate them, I am a true fan! I hope to own on sometime soon! To see more of his work, head on over to his website: http://astronuts.exblog.jp/
This Saturday will be my first time showing at the Bronx Art Space which is located in the Mott Haven section of the Bronx. I dropped off a few pieces there yesterday and was able to get a peek at some of the other artwork that will be featured. It really blew my mind, there were so many wonderful and interesting pieces and most of them will be under $300. I am super excited to be a part of this show. I was surprised to see some of the names on the bill, I’m honored to be able to participate in the same show as them!
This has proven to be one busy summer for me. I originally had two shows scheduled in September, one being the BXADP show and the other being my first two person show at the ISE Cultural Center in Soho. This current Spoof Collective show in addition to two more this August will make six shows in four months for me. I am really feeling the love! Here’s some photos from the Spoof Collective show at Hunts Point. It will be on up until August 8th every Saturday from 3-6pm at The Brick House Gallery 1391 Lafayette Avenue, Bronx NY 10474. Photos courtesy of Ignacio Soltero, who is also featured in the show.
I am so excited about this weekend. This Saturday, June 8th will be MF Gallery’s big 10th anniversary extravaganza show. I will have the pieces shown above in it, and this will mark my 7th Gallery showing. All of the pieces will be priced at $100, so I might actually sell something for once, lol! I haven’t been focusing on selling my dolls, I just create and hoard them. Hopefully I’ll break out of this habit soon, I’m beginning to run out of space. It’s kind of hard to let go of something you spend so much time on, especially when you start making outfits to put on them. Well anywho, with the above pieces they all seem to have one thing in common, and that’s confinement. It wasn’t intentional, it just turned out that way. It all started with an Archer’s iced coffee. After drinking it I realized that the label can be pulled off of the bottle clean. I then held on to it with intentions of making a doll small enough to fit inside of it. With me being obsessed with air plants at the time, I decided to make some sort of doll terrarium, so I put peat moss and flowers in with her. The second one was the doll in the frame. I had a few sea shells around so I decided to use them as some sort of horns for her head. I already had a frame that I planned on putting her in ahead of time. The last one was directly inspired from the Beatle’s Octopus’ Garden. I was listening to the song while re-potting my orchids and started thinking of the lyrics and how silly it was for an octopus to have a garden. After a quick Google search I realized that they actually do have gardens that they make out of rocks and shells that they collect. I decided to play with the idea and have an octopus with a flower garden as I and I’m sure many other’s have envisioned after hearing the song. I painted him on the side of the pot picking a flower. The show will be on Saturday June 8th at 213 Bond st, Brooklyn N.Y., from 7-10pm.
Well I must say that I have truly had a good summer. I have been fortunate to have another show at Spacewomb this past Saturday and the turnout was pretty good. Hopefully I will have more coming my way in the near future.
Melandolly 