I was interviewed recently for the wonderful Halloween Art and Travel podcast, (listen here or wherever you get your podcasts!) and had a lot of fun talking with host Kristen Stafford about creepy things and some of the scary places I’ve been, and how I started making dolls. I thought I would just write a little bit more of my story and fill in some gaps.
Most folks probably don’t really want or need to know much about an artist, but there may be a few, so this is for them.
Illustrating
I didn’t go to art school or college, I’d always loved drawing and painting but school just wasn’t in the cards, didn’t have the cash. I did a bit of running away from home and half-assed adventuring around England and Scotland and then plopped down in NYC and worked as a nanny for several years (and met my future partner, writer/ photographer John Damn Seven).
My favorite part of nannying was reading beautifully illustrated books to wee ones, and I got it into my noggin that might be something I would like to do when I was a grownup. So, after several more years of nannying, this time in the Boston area, I decided to start seriously putting some effort in that. At this time, John and I were creating an indie comic book series together so I was starting to hone my drawing skills… then we had twin sons and then I started seriously trying to give illustrating a go (read: I can’t afford daycare, I need to figure how to make money from home, so let’s start trying to sell illustrations to parenting papers for $15 each)
Slowly I started illustrating actual children’s books and did that for about fifteen years, including some favorites that John and I created together.
For most of that time, my creative soul was totally being satisfied by illustrating. Until one day when it wasn’t. There are dark parts of me along with the light parts, things that I kept having to shove aside, because I was spending 100% of my creative time drawing fairies and happy families. Obsessions with decay, decay, decay, and bones, and the beauty of life cycles, and maggots and beetles, and CROWS and trees and obsessions with why we are the way we are, the history of mental illness and Victorian insane asylums, more time spent exploring abandoned farmhouses and factories and subways, what is IN that dark corner? Oh! It’s a person! Sorry! , so many things that occupied my physical and mental time… many illustrators can express their darker parts successfully, I just couldn’t, and definitely not in the medium of children’s publishing, at least not in the path I had carved out for myself.
Timing
As i was winding down my illustrating career, I had just cut two extremely toxic family members out of my life. I never could’ve moved on to the work I’m doing now with their eyes and voices on me, telling me how dumb, weird and incompetent i am. What a fucking relief. My brain opened up, I was no longer subconsciously trying to please the un-pleasable.
Three dimensional work
And now… I needed to start making things with my hands. The characters and stories in my head could no longer be contained on a flat piece of paper. They needed to be able to stand and walk, maybe hugged. So, about 6 years ago, I started twisting bits of wire and sticks and fabric together and started to make some very rudimentary creatures.
And then, inspired by an article about artist’s Nathalie L’ete’s studio I became almost infuriatingly compelled to make paper-mache friends. I think synapsis in my brain actually started EXPLODING…. WAIT a minute! It looks like she’s just making the things she wants to make! She has giant rabbits and hanging sausages and dolls dolls dolls and rugs and WOAH! It hadn’t ever actually occurred to me to just make things that I wanted to surround myself with. I’m not sure why, it seems so obvious now. I made a five foot tall cat, who lived in our kitchen for a while (til some tiny bugs started eating her) , and a lady pig who sat on my desk.
At first I just needed to teach myself basic construction- how to build armatures that would actually hold these characters up… (wait, I have chicken wire in the basement …) do I want the beings to be able to move their arms? their heads? their legs? Do I want them to stand? to hang? to wave? to walk? So I spent the next bunch of time literally filling my house with small things, BIG things, HANGING BIG things… I think adding the papier-mâché element was the final bit that my brain needed to help bring these characters to life.
At around this time we were in Budapest for a week and I experienced a couple things that left a huge impression: wooden puppets hanging in a bar (!), and a trip to the Semmelweiss Museum where I came face to face with small hand carved anatomical dolls that were used as teaching tools for hundreds of years and large, lifelike wax anatomical figures. These would inform how my art would start to evolve over the next few years in really profound ways.
Since then, all of the things that have been lurking in my brain, under cobwebs, maybe in nightmares, usually just in obsessive thoughts… having been find their way to the surface. and the more I make, the more that emerge. I showed them twice in kind of gallery settings at art house movie theaters, and I sold a few pieces. and just kept making things.
So, I applied to do some shows with my friend, artist Marianne Petit, who makes incredible pop-up book and other beautiful paper craft.
We had a blast. I met a bunch of really lovely people, got to see folks reacting to my work and actually sold some pieces and was like… yep, here we go. A dam burst and I cannot stop making. This is just what I do.
Here is a tiny collection of some of the pieces that I’ve loved working on the most over the last six years. Picking favorites was really hard. If you’d like to see more of the pieces I’m most proud, you can hop over to my website.
other stuff
When I’m not making dolls, I might be reading, hanging out in my garden with my dog, we have a hammock now- which is like a dream! taking a walk, we have lots of forests around us that are so good for finding old bones or discovering new mushrooms or ferns, perhaps poking around some old abandoned place- looking for some nice piece of wood, some old scrap of something, checking out Goodwill or our local salvage place, watching either a really good film, or a really bad one. But I still mostly like just being in my room… my family always knows where to look for me first. I’m almost always listening to music, but I’m also learning how to like just… quiet, too.
Every once in a while I get a bit panicky about how to pay bills and think i need to go fill out a job application at CVS- or am I too old to be a nanny? Will the museum hire me back as a security guard even though I fled after working only a few hours? But thankfully, these moments are fleeting. I know I that I’m doing what I need to be doing… for whatever reason and that I actually have little choice in the matter. Also, the museum would definitely not hire me back.
The very best part of my current creative life is just letting it happen, and being the one who is finally making the rules about what that is, or isn’t. Following every idea, feeling the gears click when I figure out how to make something new, painting little faces and watching them come alive, feeling these little souls in my hands. And also connecting with other makers, and the people who enjoy my work, that’s the most magic part.
~ ~ ~ ~
I’m currently typing this on a shared computer in our living room/kitchen, the room where John takes all of his beautiful photographs of my dolls. It’s the first day of July, the wonderful windows that cast such beautiful light on my dolls are open, the breeze is flicking the leaves around on the pear tree, I have a dog on either side of me, and some pasta to start for dinner… and honestly can’t wait to get back into my 130 year old former-dining-room-now-bedroom-and-tiny workshop. SO many dolls I want to make. I recently heard this piece of music that has lodged itself in my brain, that makes me stop dead, and I can’t get these images out of my head and figuring out how to make it all work…
x
jana
p.s. I wrote a little piece about my creative process here, if you’d like to read more about that. And if you have questions about any of this, or things I talked about in the podcast or my interview with Byrne Power, or anything else, leave a comment and I’ll answer!
Such an amazing and raw sharing of your journey with making! So inspiring! I experienced a similar period like that in my life when I was younger. It was like the dolls and creatures simply poured through my hands. Thank you for sharing this in such wonderful detail. I have been yearning to reconnect in a new way with my own intuitive spark!!! I also loved seeing the photos of your process! Thanks for being with us!
I never knew you were working on this. I live your story and all of the dolls, but I expect you would know that. We're so proud of you and what you've done with your life.