When I was a child my grandfather invented the first movable doll’s eye in America and he began a Toy Company called “IDEAL”. It was only after college that I started to make doll images. Now my interest is passionate.
All the doll images come from my personal collection and from pictures cut from magazines. I prefer vintage dolls. Most of them were found in travels lecturing throughout the country.
In our country we don’t feel about dolls as Europeans, Africans or Asians do. For example, a friend of mine visiting Japan was told to visit a special temple. When she arrived, five nuns met her. She asked why they were in this large temple of dolls. They replied “We are here to care for their souls”.
When I was a young girl I joined a dance class taught by two sisters, Lola and Mita Rhom. Recently from Germany, they taught the Dalcrose Method. It was the simple motion of running, jumping, skipping and moving one’s body in the most imaginative way. Emile-Jacques Dalcrose, at a school in Hellerau, near Dresden in 1911, originated a method to teach music using the movement of the body. The essence of his idea, which he named Eurhythmics, was improvisation.
Later in life, alone in my studio, I danced to music on the radio finding out that I could re-arrange my body by twisting, stomping, or flailing my arms and legs to pretend I was in the air.
When these feelings moved to the canvas or to paper and when I was able to find men and women who would pose for me, I discovered a new experience that was pure joy.