My world is always different in the summer when the art school where I work has a thriving summer camp running full throttle for seven weeks. It is invigorating and exciting, creative and draining and I wonder if I only truly appreciate it when the summer is done. That's when I can sit on my back porch for a couple of days and cut old paintings into scrappy paper dolls, when I can brew the random bits of history and imagery into a story and when I can think through the theory that weaves through all of this.

As theories go mine has no footnotes, no ties to French philosophers ('cept maybe TinTin but he wasn't French, he was Belgian) and no followers, nor has it really been written down and I attempt it here as a way to contextualize these paper dolls and why I am feverishly drawn to making them.

Ahem.

The art we make that makes others smiles naturally, that comes out when we least expect it, that feels right is worth giving, sharing, trading, leaving where it can be found. By pushing past the boundaries --rules of art endlessly written, the voice that says you can't make art, and the time drains-- and making something honest we open the possibility that someone else can find joy in the thing we found joy in making. Scrips and scraps can come together in coherent, cohesive, if ridiculous meaning. The best stuff we make is the stuff we have to make, sometimes the meaning becomes evident only after the last connector is connected.

Above, then is Ivan, below is Lucy (but I want to call her Sinead because I so vividly recall that moment)...


and below that is Pierre and they are all of the batch of paperdolls that I will have at my booth at the Artist's Market. Where I oughtta be able to flesh out my theory some and send some of these dolls out in the world. Right now I have about 75 of them and they keep growing, growing and growing.




Here we are after labor day weekend and I am slowed down. Happily so. So happily.
Off to make more dolls, dear, and so please take care and come see me at the market...

Rachael