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!
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 have a workshop scheduled for next week Saturday, October 28th at the Huntington Free Library in the Westchester Square section of the Bronx. In my head, I had it down for it’s original date that was discussed which was November 11th, so it kind of creeped up on me. I pretty much know exactly what I plan on doing, so I feel like I’m prepared for the most part. I just need to round up my materials for the participants. I can’t wait to meet the group that I’ll be working with, it’s always interesting to see what people come up with!
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!
Well I have finally committed to adding new pieces to my Etsy shop each and every week. I have a good amount of work that is laying around for me to have a solo show and then some, it’s time for these babies to go! I now have 15 original one of a kind pieces up for grabs and more is on the way. Along with these new pieces, I have come up with a good way to create original stories for each one of them. I use a plot generator, all I need to do is pop in a few words to describe the characters and like magic, a wild and absurd story line is generated. I know it’s cheating, but I love seeing what this thing comes up with, the results are so crazy at times! Writing stories was another thing that held me back from listing my items, I wanted to hand craft each story to perfection which would result in me writing and editing drafts over and over again for each piece. As an extremely wise woman once said, “Ain’t nobody got time fo that”!
Here’s one of my more successful stories that’s come out of the story generator, enjoy! Abigail, The Phantom Cat Lover
Here’s a few pics from Me and Ignacio’s latest Installation “Melanchromatic”. It was part of boom! theater’s monthly salon show that showcased poets, comedians and boom!’s very first screening of Puzzle People which is a weekly series about two friends who love puzzles more than people. It was an amazing night!
I am still hastily preparing for the Bronx Little Italy Art Show. I want to try to focus on more affordable pieces so that everyone could have a little Melandolly of their own. It’s at that point where I’m beginning to feel the crunch, I have about 2 1/2 weeks to try and crank all these little ones out. Wish me luck!
I have been feverishly working on a brand new set of pieces to be sold at the Bronx Little Italy Art Show this June 28th. I’m not sure exactly how many pieces that I’ll have by that time but they will definitely be priced to sell! Please be sure to stop by, I will have more details of the time and location as the date approaches. Please stand by!
For those who haven’t seen this piece named “Women’s Troubles” in its entirety on Facebook, Instagram etc., here it is completed. As I may have mentioned before, this piece explores the problems that women face in the workplace and at home. At work, women face issues such as being overlooked for promotions, unequal pay and sexual harassment, while at home they are to assumed to take on all of the domestic duties. Our roles have changed drastically but society still views us as being less than that of our male counterparts, making it very difficult for us to succeed in the workplace.
Melandolly 