Doll Making as a Spiritual Journey
by Kay Marie Porterfield
At first I approached figure making tentatively. I was intimidated by the art dolls I saw on websites and in books, mystified at how people made such powerful and beautiful objects. For most of my life I used words to express my thoughts and feelings, and I was overwhelmed by the notion of turning clay into tiny hands and feet. The craft of making faces eluded me.
Nonetheless, I pulled my bead stash from the closet and began collecting scraps of interesting material and blocks of polymer clay. For months I stumbled over the pile of supplies trying to ignore what clearly was a call. I was a writer, not an artist I told myself.
Finally, I realized that just because I chose to ignore the call, didn’t mean it was going to go away. The only way to remove this stumbling block was to slowly use the beads, cloth and clay until they were gone. Little did I know that the supply would grow instead of shrink and that the dolls would become my spirit teachers.
During a year of allowing figures to emerge, I became aware that words alone can sometimes stand in the way of self knowledge and spiritual growth.
There are many ways to foster and record personal transformations. Figure making is one of them, a powerful one that I now use in combination with my journal writing and my other visual art. When I allow my hands and eyes to create reflections of the deepest images of my heart, the figures that result from these efforts transform me – one bead at a time.
Blue Muse:
For my first attempt, I used acrylic painted fabric and a pattern from Patti Medaris Culea's Creative Doll Making book. Rather than trying a realistic face, I made a stylized one with Czech seed beads. My intention was to make a pretty doll. Instead Blue Muse popped out. (I can tell from looking at him that he has some trickster blood in his genealogy.) Blue Muse sat on a shelf with his mocking grin, waiting for me to plunge into the creative flow again for three more months.