Jay Bird Girl

    My favorite native Northwestern bird, the sassy Steller's Jay, bold yet wary, and brilliant, both mentally and plumage-wise.  The young raised in the spruce tree behind my deck have long fledged, and they're hanging around acting rather like adolescents; so, doll inspiration!  It's an interesting process, creating an anthropomorphic animal doll.  How the arms morph to wings, and such.  It stimulates sculptural thinking and it's fun.  And it is a happy way to express my admiration and affection for this marvelous bird.

On a Roll!

Another dollie, another day -- I'm just in a doll making mood; as I said, once they start to take shape you have to keep moving because, well, I'm not quite sure why. Here's another, right on the work bench, Ms. Witch dressed for a date with the full moon.

Doll Fever!

When the WiP is a doll and he or she begins to acquire a bit of life, and then becomes a "personage," well, then it's too hard to stop. It's a bit like birth and one doesn't want the labor to last too long -- so here he is. NOSFERATU! Fresh from my workbench before posing the beauty shot -- what's not to love?

Autumnal Work in Progress

Enough of those handsome, broody young vampires! What I want is a real deal, thoroughly ka-reepy NOSFERATU, the classic threatening, suck-your-blood and leave-your-dry-husk flapping in the wind-type vampire. Something German Expressionism, Vlad-the-Impaler, spine-chilling as the leaves begin to fall ... So, what better than a doll and assemblage of all my evocative odds and ends? A page of text in Serbian, a bit of dusty velvet, tarnished brocade, blood-red silk, perhaps a palatial casket with cast iron fittings for those bright afternoons. Bwaahahaa!

Vini, Vidi, Vici

It's yard sale time on a sunny Sunday in Seattle, and boyohboy did I ever score! A page from Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, dated 1883, some strange magnifying spectacles that work like a hinged pince nez; a saccharine cherub plucking a harp; a shuttle for mending fishing nets and superscore of scores -- an 1885 autograph book kept by Miss Lily of Abilene, Kansas.

The autograph has a lot of old timey stickers of all kinds, but I especially like the Union soldier (General Sherman) with roses. An interesting touch for memorabilia from Kansas in 1886; the memories then would not have been old ones.

And, the handwriting, so fine, most of it written in ink with a steel point pen.

Now these treasures need to rest awhile before they reincarnate in a tasty bit of assemblage.