My bird! My misunderstood bird.

Aaaand done!





Brian Froud's sketch:

Adventures in FaerieCon...

Holy heck on toast~ but I don't get out enough~!

Thank goodness for lively sisters - or I'd wander around my little room and little world quietly and never go on any adventures.

FaerieCon was less overwhelming this year ~ I even get the courage up to speak to Mr. Froud - even shook his hand - which was something I've wanted to do for a rather long time. His work shaped my life. Though I stood like a dullard in front of Wendy on more than one occasion. But my mind is normally full of images and shapes and colors - so having to put words together and hand them over to one my most beloved artists- most influential and amazing ladies was more than my spongy grey-matter could handle. At least I didn't get light-headed or stammer or inadvertently insult them~

I was far less the fool chatting with other awesome artists... but I fear I am to be doomed near the Frouds.

As for projects in this moment~ my mind is still buzzing with thoughts of wings and bits of bark... but I'd best refocus on Christmas stuff... I do adore the idea of people hanging my works on the tree - or giving my dolls to their sweet-hearts.

Maybe some dolls in the scale of this little moogle commission~ I am really loving this size - it means using a thiner wire - which I was hesitant to do up until just a bit ago - I like the robust armature wire - But~ people won't be animating movies with my dolls... sooooo... small dolls it is!

Long overdue...

Oh goodness - I'm sorry - I puttered off without so much as a word. But England was my distraction and it was awesome! Of course - I didn't see ALL of it... but I did ride a great number of miles on a good number of trains, so I saw just about all the rails that run from the East to the West.... and I was able to see the edge of Dartmoor <-- the landscape/area that inspired Brian Froud's Faeries... though I didn't see a copy of this book until I was in my 20's... and I'm not sure how or when a copy ended up in my collection - though I was happy to see it when I went home to visit my books...errrr.. I mean family. (love you, guys!) ... I think I learned more about this particular tome listening to the man himself at FaerieCon a few years back. And then I had to know more and then of course - I had to go there. I must have mentioned it one too many times because when the chance came up family and friends all but tossed me on a plane.

I now have pledged to become the TOTAL expert on Dartmoor. I only saw its sheep poo covered edge and I am so in love I fear I may have to move to England.

Well... I should probably get back to the monsters I'm making (photos to follow).

Be back sooooon! Promise.

work-work-work- lint roll! + Heros

Oh the fur! I am covered with it... the room is covered with it... Do they make room sized lint rollers? No matter, I have ye'ol broom and dust pan.
I'm happy with how they are turning out... each one is new, and I'm learning little things about the materials. Though I find myself, sadly, still trying to shake the world of the 'fine artist' that I was hardly ever really in... I've made only four of these little guys and a conversation with my favorite college teacher keeps tugging at the corners of my mind - he was worried that I would fall into the trap of only creating the flower pictures that I have, probably, only ever made half a dozen of... and at the time of the conversation - had only made two and just for my senior show. A show that, I hoped, would express my confusion about what made the shapes I found so pleasing 'corny' if they had eyes or 'art' if I turned them to the side and covered their faces...

I never have found answers... only the ones I've dug out of the muck of my own mind - And that is... these things are easy to like. Flowers, imps, trees, etc etc... they are easy to understand and to except. And so - they are not fine art.. heck, they are often hardly considered art.

But - and I have come to find this the most reassuring of things- all the artists whose works I've long loved - did not create works that fall into those fields of acceptance. I love Clive Barker's art work with a passion. He is shameless and he is ever ever EVER full of life and imagination and corny though it is - love. Love for creation and expression... and that comes in the form of strange and wonderful things that he -wants- people to want. He isn't holding you at bay with a stick demanding you pay him homage.

Brian Froud creates for a deity.. a force he believes calls to him - I don't have any such supernatural force to blame for my active choice to create things with pointy ears - I really really just like how they look. I do think I can blame him for it though. I blame him for a lot of my innate esthetics. Well.. I blame him and Jim Henson... and don't get me started on Jim Henson... I think his name... his work.. and his life speaks for itself. I was beyond lucky to have had a childhood so surrounded by his creative presence.

I'm proud to not fall into a world of creators that make solely for themselves.... I would be honored to, maybe, be placed in that category where all my heros meander: Imaginative fantasy (to use the Netflix genre name). Even if that means I inevitably find myself working at a bank... I'd rather have walked this path for a little while than to have lived the in the world of gallery shows and pretension. I once said - I'd rather be sweeping floors at The Creature Shop than working anywhere else... I still feel that way - geh.

Back to work! Where is that 'ol broom. ;)