They say artist need to express themselves in the emotional times of their lives, wether that be high points or lows ones and this Art Doll was created during probably the lowest emotional time of my life. You see my father had just passed away and I was having a difficult time feeling much of anything. My Etsy orders still trudged on, but there wasn’t the same feeling of enthusiasm that I had for them. Being with family and friends during this time really did help, but when I returned home each night, there was this gloom that seemed to suck the color right out life. My father had been a big part of my life and each time I went to start on a new project, there was this dread that I wouldn’t be able to share things with him any longer.
So without an actual purpose or end goal to this new creation, I just started sculpting. I had a lot of white polymer clay, so I figured I would use that. It started out as the ball, then I added blobs of clay and let the shapes start to speak for themselves and before I knew it, a Rabbit was looking at me. I suddenly became obsessed with finishing it. Hands and feet, texture of the hair. I added tinfoil behind the glass eyes because I had seen it in Penny Dreadful and it did bring his eyes to life. And then I baked him and placed him in box until I could figure out what exactly he was going to be.
And there he sat in the box, waiting patiently for me to find that spark once again to finish him between the orders that kept trickling in from Etsy. Easter came and went; it had given be an idea of a parody of the Easter Bunny. A Necromancer to be exact. Also there had been a wish for my father return, so there was a lot of emotional subplot going on there. So on no particular day, I created his wire body and started filling him out. I dyed the cheese cloth for his clothing and found a beaded set of old broken flip flops that would do as armor. I applied the lessons that I had learned from the other Art Dolls I had created and built upon them, until at last he was finished.
In December 2017 someone took an extra liking to him and their friend purchased it through Etsy as a Christmas gift. I cried as I drove the package to the post office and yet I was ecstatic that someone would look at this art doll every day and cherish it.
