Coming Up Next!

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!

New Work

Art Dolls, Work in Progress

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.

Career Goals

Art Dolls, Art Shows, Completed Dolls, Work in Progress

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.

Travis, the Malendolly :D

Art Dolls, Completed Dolls, Uncategorized, Work in Progress

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!

More Experimenting

Art Dolls, Uncategorized, Work in Progress

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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!

Getting Closer…

Uncategorized

I have been doing some more work on the doll that I’m creating for Billy Black over the past few days. I was kind of stuck trying to figure out which face paint to put on him since he has so many different styles that he wears. I decided to use the one that he wore when I met him for our meeting since that seems to be the design that he wears more often. All I need to do now is work a bit more on his mustache and style his outfit, I’m getting a lot closer now.

The Evolution of Feet

Art Shows, Completed Dolls

With this last piece that I’ve worked on for Innuendos, I found myself sculpting a couple of things for the first time. The most challenging out of them all were the eight arms hands down (no pun intended!), but the most unusual out of my first time items were the feet. I never bother too much with sculpting feet on my dolls because I am very anxious to get to all of the other mundane tasks of doll making such as sanding, picking out fabric, the dreadful sewing, hair gluing, etc. I usually just paint some simple shoes on like a ballerina slipper or a sock and get on with it. It came natural to me to create them, I just found it unnecessary to focus on them for my characters, just like ears. (There’s only one Melandolly that I’ve created with ears lol!). This time I felt the need to have actual feet. I wanted to have one foot bare with toes and everything and the other in a high heel. The bare foot is on the domestic housewife side of the piece while the heel is on the career woman half of it. I wanted to play up the “barefoot in the kitchen” phrase and also create the ideal vision of a business woman in heels.

Want to see more? Come see the finished piece at the Andrew Freedman Home at 1125 Grand Concourse, Bronx, NY 10452 from March 6th through April 1st!

The opening is this Friday from 5:30-9:30pm, hope to see you there!

Innuendos: A Collection of Work by Ten Women Artists From The Bronx

Uncategorized

I am very proud to be a part of this upcoming show with the Bronx Arts Factory. The show is curated by Yolanda and Yelaine Rodriguez and they wanted to choose 10 female artists to connect you to the female form and the struggles that women face. I am still working on my pieces but I wanted to share a few of my work in progress shots. The name of this piece is “Women’s Troubles”. I wanted to illustrate the changing roles of women and the problems that they face as they make an attempt to live up to society’s expectations of them along with trying to balance their work and home lives. The show will be at the Andrew Freedman Home at 1125 Grand Concourse, Bronx, New York 10452 from March 6th through April 1st

Holiday Pressure!

Uncategorized

Every year I plan on making some holiday themed dolls and ornaments and I never get around to it. After going on Facebook and seeing what my fellow dolly friends are making, I decided to give it a shot. At the moment I have a table full of dolls and doll parts but no finished pieces. I think I’m going to try to scale back and try to work on one maybe 3 pieces at a time, wish me luck guys!