"Really, there is no one but Matisse." I wasn't sure why Picasso said this when I first read it on the back of a Taschen book on Matisse, because up to that point, I thought Picasso was the greatest painter and didn't know much about Matisse. But after Picasso led me to Matisse, I understood, and am now entranced with both of them. And with Giacometti, Toulouse Lautrec, Monet, Van Gogh, Vermeer, and so many more. After I started making dolls, I wanted to learn how to embroider and make beautiful faces, so I started buying art books at a wonderful used bookstore in North Hollywood. It was there I discovered Toulouse Lautrec's posters of dancers from the Moulin Rouge. I started dressing my dolls in crinkling taffeta dresses, ruffled petticoats and bloomers. The same thing happened with music. A few years ago, while working on Paulette, who was to be a dancing doll for my niece on her eighth birthday, I heard the "Suite Parisienne" by Jacques Offenbach from his comic opera, "Orpheus in the Underworld." It was the "Can-Can!" It made me jump up and dance around the room with Paulette! I told my sewing partner, Yvette, another Los Angeles area doll maker, about it. Together, we googled Offenbach and saw the dancers in their bloomers and petticoats and fancy dresses. We decided we would make a chorus line of "Can-Can" dolls. That didn't quite happen, but we've both made lots of dolls since. Yvette shared some of her vintage taffeta with me and I shared the huge purple petticoat from the 1950's that I found at a thrift store with her. (To learn more about Yvette, visit her etsy shop AllAboutEvette) Making dolls put me back in touch with art, the way one experiences it as a child: a total, uninhibited embrace. I am so inspired by the great artists when I design a doll and energized by Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, Scarlatti and so many other composers when I sew, that the hours fly by and I end up hearing some incredible music in the process. While putting the finishing touches on Carmen, my latest doll, I heard a lively, exotic, piece of dance music that seemed written for her: "Fandango" by Boccarini. So everything is jumbled up with doll making: art, music, work and dance. I feel like I'm back in kindergarten and have just been given a box of beautiful, waxy crayons with exotic names like "magenta, " "heliotrope" and "vermillion," and my only job is fill a giant sheet of art paper with anything I want. Maybe you have something in your life that makes you feel that way. My next blog post will cover seam rippers and Strauss. See you next week! Sasha
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There will soon be a new addition to the dollsbysasha site: Carmen. She is tall and slim, has purple and white polkadot arms and legs, long blond hair with gold highlights, and a few curls. The room where I write this looks like backstage at the Moulin Rouge, with the bed covered with thrift-store evening gowns, tulle and scraps of netting and other materials, as Carmen's dress and petticoat take shape. I hope to post some pictures of Carmen and her dress-in progress in the next few days. I was at the Getty Museum a few months ago to see the French, 17th and 18th Century exhibit of clothes, furniture and lifestyles, to see what I could incorporate into the dollmaking. On the way out, I stumbled upon Giacometti's statue of a tall, thin, woman. (Not sure of the title.) Naturally, I had to pose next to it! A picture in the New York Times last year of Giacometti's six foot bronze statue, the "Walking Man" may have iinspired th etall, thin dolls. (Maybe a six foot doll is in the offing???!) Mimosa and Sophie's doll, Suki, are 31" tall. Strangely, Carmen is exactly the same height, without measuring! Next post, I want to talk about art and dolls and what Picasso said about Matisse! See you next week! Sasha |
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