Today I took three art dolls to The Word Is Art gallery in Culver City for their upcoming Art Dolls exhibition. I have pulled "Journey" the bead head doll, "Hope" the 14 inch Dream Doll, and "Winged Victory" altered Barbie from sale to make them available through the gallery until the end of April.   The gallery is a nice space with lots of art doll artists in the cooperative. I really enjoyed looking around today. As soon as I have more information about the exhibit I will post here and at Dolls: Crafting and Collecting .   Work-in-progress. I will also be teaching a workshop during the exhibition, although I'm not sure what. The gallery offers some pretty sweet classes already including a cool mixed media vintage tin doll figure class . It's almost impossible to go wrong with those great looking tins.  

Please enjoy this free faux vintage advert image to use in your card making or other crafting. There will be a tutorial at Natural Life Magazine shortly, using upcycled materials to make cards. The sweet image of the young chef is from The Graphics Fairy - a terrific source for vintage images. Let me know in the comments if you use this, and as always Please Pin!

 Here are scans of sketches of my ideas for future large scale figurative soft sculptures. These would be built up over armatures - I'm considering plumbing or electrical piping - with batting and polyfil. The skin will be made from different fabrics, with various surface treatments depending on the theme of the figure. I am expecting to start with muslin or over dyed fabrics. I will be manipulating the fabrics and then embellishing once the body is built - just as I do with my current hand held dolls. I am also planning on using found objects, hand made and upcycled objects as "beads". Lots of hand work, naturally.

Following a circuitous route, I found myself at the website of the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas. Here is a link to the page where regional artists may learn  how to submit their work to be sold in the museum store. Regional includes Arkansas and "touching States", Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Mississippi, Louisiana and Tennessee. Hey, I know some artists who live in those States.