Creative Impulse: Small Works, Approaching the Russian Nesting Dolls

When I was younger my brother and I would get dropped off at my Abuela's house during the summers when my parents had to work. Aside from a couple Disney movies there wasnt much to entertain myself until one day while I was exploring my mom's old closet I found an old box of knick-knacks. Among the old beenie babies, wildly colored telephones, and a strange amount of plastic frogs I found a beautiful little wooden doll. I remember running to my Abuela and asking if I could play with it since it looked like something I would get in trouble for if it broke. She smiled and told me that she used to love playing with them too and that I could go ahead.  It became my favorite toy that I kept at my Abuela's house. I loved stacking them, hiding things in them, and turning them into instruments.

As an adult I try to experience things with the same wonderment that I had as a child, it makes life more fun. When I began these small works I was planning to mimic the doll. But as I began to work with the material I realized that I wanted people to enjoy what I enjoyed about playing with the dolls.

My first figure was all about the human form that the doll took. I wanted to keep it a simple shape, giving just enough information to have it look human. The second piece was about the joy of opening the doll. I really want to work on this one more because although it is a container like the doll(which is another aspect of it) I wanted it to have more of a "pop" because I remember having difficulty sometimes opening them. The floor piece was about quantity and the fact that most Russian doll sets come in a set of 7 or 9. I actually became interested in what the numbers might mean so I looked at some numerology and felt like the numbers needed some attention. I tried doing that with the different colored tally marks but again this is a piece that I would like to look in to try and recreate with some better material. The hanging piece with the roses inside is probably my favorite because it made me have to explore my strange new materials and try to think of a way to have it talk with my already existing pieces. I looked up patterns on the shawls that the nesting dolls would wear and in almost all of them there were bright flowers(or patterns that resembled flowers) which contrast their dark cold winters. I wanted to imagine what the world inside of the doll was like, perhaps there was one that I couldnt see. I wanted to use negative space to make the viewer feel like that they were seeing something from the inside out. Lastly my threaded piece is the one that I had the most difficulty with. The idea changed several times but sometimes once you get into the art groove the piece will speak for itself. In this one I just enjoyed weaving the string and making patterns.

One thing I learned from the peer critique was that I wanted people to see the pieces in a way that was playful and would lead them through my Abuela's house starting from the floor piece up to the hanging piece. I plan on exploring different settings.