June 2009                       Issue 28

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JUNE

Home for the Summer...  June is gardening time!

Dollmaker/Gardener harvests hundreds of Sweet 100's Cherry Tomatoes!

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ah, what a month, June. Cascades of flowers. wow.

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Never a dull moment in the backyard...

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...of course ha ha that was the beginning of June.

By the end of June, with every day over 100 degrees, what happened next was not pretty...

this is a picture of the lawn taken on June 25th

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Even with slender means, the sentiment of the heart can be expressed.

-The I Ching

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The OMO People

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Beautiful. A totally awesome video. 

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uh-oh... 

Now, who are these characters?

  A Visit from some Old Friends...  

  a couple of the Original Wee Peeple Dolls 

 made back in 1984

came for a brief visit with their Dollmaker mother

Phil M. Up (a Vagabond Hobo)  and  Pierrot with Bauble

You can imagine the conversations these two might have...

but it is that bad Bauble Fellow who says all those raunchy things in front of the Ladies!

Remember the old tags... 

This is what the Wee Peeple Doll Tags looked like in 1984.

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(from the collection of Jay Polsky... Thanks, Jay)

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hey, it's June, we're not doing much... how about a walk...

A Walk Down Memory Lane

remember these.....?

The Jesters on Sticks!

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These were for the kids... of all ages!

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Well, you know, not everyone knows anymore what was going on with

The Wee Peeple Dolls

 back in

  the 80's

     (ok Jay, see what you started... here we go... we're going back, back, back in time.... to)

a time when the Wee Peeple Dolls were constructed upwards from children's shoes...

These are the very first Wee Peeple Dolls, made in 1980

(Look at how big the heads are!  yikes!)

The Dollmaker delighted in creating every kind of character she could think of...

but everyone's favorite dolls were

The  Portrait Wee Peeple

A Chinese Tailor. His employees wanted a Portrait Doll made of him so they stole his shirt, his tie, his pants (well, his whole suit, really), and his watch, and brought these items, like an offering, to the Dollmaker, who made this Doll from all the stuff.

This Doll had a wardrobe!

shown here: Rick Stacy smiling along with his  Portrait Doll

at home and at the Texas Renaissance Festival...

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Lots of Publicity in the 80's

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in December of 1983 the Wee Peeple were featured in

Texas Highways Magazine

There's a story referencing this page...

see the   September 2008 Issue

of the Wee Peeple Newsletter 

(The Story is entitled simply: The Dollmaker's True Story)

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  1983      and       1984

at the Texas Renaissance Festival...

IN 1983 the Wee Peeple were given an "ARBOR AREA" (sort of like a porch or a pole barn)... The next year in that space we built the Doll Shoppe and the Magick Garden. Three upright (but no longer functional) 4x4's stand in the Magick Garden, testimony to the old long-gone "Arbor Area".

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In 1984 the Wee Peeple were on the cover of the

Texas Weekly Sunday Supplement....

This Wizard with Crystal Ball is still in the Artist's Collection. The Football Player was a doll made for a high school boy, commissioned by his mother. Bless her heart.

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October 2004

20 years later, the Photographer who took the pictures for that Sunday Supplement, Allan Kimball, ran into the Dollmaker at the Watermelon Festival in Luling, and, low and behold, he had become the owner of the Hill Country Sun...

Customers (whether purposefully or haphazardly) arriving at the Wee Peeple Doll Shoppe at the Texas Renaissance Festival in October of 2004 might remember the stacks of Hill Country Sun Newspapers strewn about like hay bales in the display areas... everybody got a Hill Country Sun Newspaper with their purchase that year. Heck, everybody who walked across the threshold of the Doll Shoppe that season got a Newspaper with the Wee Peeple Dolls on the cover.

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ok now...let's Keep going back in time....

BEFORE   1980

there were Dolls

but they were not called the Wee Peeple Dolls

the early dolls were "floppy" (gasp! NO!)

so now, let's really go back

Back to the 70's

in 1978

even before the Wee Peeple Dolls

there were the

"Dolls of the People You Know"

The Dollmaker's first attempt at

Portrait Dolls made from photographs and descriptions

 $25 apeice.... for a Portrait Doll back then!!!

Located on Nueces Street in downtown Austin, Texas 

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 Standing up on their own two feet

was what characterized the Wee Peeple Dolls

So the Floppy Dolls pre-date the Wee Peeple Dolls.

This was an important change for the Dollmaker.

The evolution from sitting to standing.

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Keep going BACK...........

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OK...  even BEFORE the "Dolls of the People You Know"

in  1975-1976

During the Dollmaker's senior year at college....

she submitted a request to conduct

a One-Year

Independent Study

 in Toy and Dollmaking

the Dollmaker's College Yearbook Picture.   (1976)

That would be Alfred State Ceramic College, Alfred, NY 

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BACK, BACK,

to the very Beginning....

The Dollmaker's Story actually begins in college

with this doll...

 The first Doll... the Ballerina Doll 

As a child, I had dreamed of becoming a Ballerina.

 This doll was created long ago, during another warm and pleasant summer at home, safely far away from the pressures of art school, using my mother's old Singer sewing machine, and hand embroidering the face... for the first time,

drawn to Dollmaking as a path of personal expression.

This was the doll that changed the course of the Dollmaker's life.

(see "About the Artist")

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 This little male doll was the Dollmaker's first attempt at Soft-Sculpturing,

using a stretchy but ribbed knit for the face.

This doll taught me that I needed to look for face fabric with no ribbing in it!

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 carved and dried Apple-Heads

 were fine while I was at school in the dry Allegany Plateau, 

but as soon as I brought these Apple Heads home to Southampton on the coast, 

they grew mold and I had to toss them out.

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There were many other dolls made during her course of study...

the styrofoam marionette....the sock puppet...

....and that would be the Dollmaker in the center... face painting by college roomate, Angie

(the Dollmaker was 23 years old at that time!)

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70's                                               80's                                                90's

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It is a time of surrendering to what you know to be truth. Even though it cannot be proven, or confirmed, pointed out, documented, charted or recorded in history.  Surrender and trust your process. The butterfly that you are, inside this human caterpillar, inside of this earthly cocoon, is far greater than any illusion.  Let go and know that the divine plan will work through you no matter what.  The caterpillar is destined to become a butterfly!

Gillian MacBeth-Louthan

see whole article

http://spiritlibrary.com/gillian-macbeth-louthan/portal-of-choice 

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An awesome video entitled:

 Cracker Jack Cure

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Cracker Jack Cure

Source: www.youtube.com

The film was made by Chris Chandler and Karen Kilroy in Akron Ohio The Poem was written by Chris Chandler and Phil Rockstroh The song "The Dutchman" was written by Michael Smith and used in this piece with his kind permission. ...

The musical arrangement: David Roe, Nappy Thomas plays violin. Kathryn Falcone (hairbraider) sings, and her Dad plays sax.

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til next time.....

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