Flipping King is an artist trading/card paper doll with a choice of trousers and footwear. He is made from an altered playing card and magazine clippings. Flipping King was included in a book by Lark Books – Artful Paper Dolls – a hardcover with a brief history of Paper Dolls, featured artists and a gallery. I was pleased to have work on the same pages as artists Margi Hennen and Kathlyn Moss.
Trojan Sunfish wears Brad Pitt’s helmet over a sun face from exotic wrapping paper. His body is wonderful Japanese paper. He is about 38 cm tall (more or less, depending on the way he swishes his tail).
Trojan Sunfish has been included in a new book by Lark Books – Artful Paper Dolls – an energetic hardcover with a brief history of Paper Dolls, featured artists and a gallery. I am so pleased to have work on the same pages as artists Margi Hennen and Kathlyn Moss.
Ralph is a cross-dressing leopard frog who is positioned atop his stump. I am indebted to Julie MacCullough’s Gnome Crone for the legs and cut-in-one shoes. The stump has a niche for hanging earrings and two practical drawers. One drawer contains a quote from Jeanette Winterson’s Art Objects: Essays on Ecstasy and Effrontery, concerning the importance of cross-dressed performers to Shakespeare’s plays and to early opera. The content of the other drawer is known to very few.
Leila was shown in Ontario through the spring of 2000; February 4 – 28, 2000, in Fire!, sponsored by the Connections fibrearts group, Dundas, Ontario; March 4-April 28, 2000, in Framed, Arkell Schoolhouse Gallery, Guelph, Ontario; April-May, 2000; and at the Textile Festival, August, 2004, Inverness County Centre for the Arts, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia.
I built Caregiver in 1989 for a joint show with Margi Hennen, entitled Use Container Provided. With her towel dispenser, she carried out the “container” theme. I replaced the paper towels with cloth towels embroidered and painted to depict acts of kindness and care. Clearly, she has a limited capacity.
Unless others care for her by folding and replacing the cloth towels, she will be exhausted, no longer able to dispense those good acts. Ten years later, Brigette Neumann, Executive Director of the Nova Scotia Advisory Council on the Status of Women saw Caregiver in my studio.
“Tell me about that,” said Brigette.
In a trice she envisioned how Caregiver could promote and participate in the Council’s series of events celebrating International Women’s Week 2000, and that’s just what Caregiver did.
