Artist Statement

My dollmaking began over twenty years ago with the design and production of a set of feeling puppets. I manufactured and shared them, along with their stories, with over 1,000 Minnesota children in school settings. I learned that the creating and sharing of a three-dimensional, emotional soft sculpture was non-threatening and allowed for an easy, playful exchange of feeling stories. I also learned that something wonderful happened during the making of the puppet for me and the engaging in conversation with the puppet in others. What I witnessed and experienced was a release of stress, a shift of energy, a willingness to be open to possibilities and a change in disabling beliefs. This is my definition of healing.

My puppet making shifted to dollmaking after seeing Brenna Busse’s dolls at a community college show, discovering Elinor Peace Bailey’s book Mother Plays with Dolls and meeting Maureen Carlson. My dollmaking started with a small strawberry root found in my garden. I pulled it from the earth, washed off the dirt, turned it upside down (making the root the hair), wrapped her in a few, small fibers, glued a small clay face on her and attached a bell for embellishment. For several years this was my process, harvesting roots each fall and forming dolls from them, allowing the roots’ shapes to inspire the design of the dolls.

My dollmaking continued as I completed my bachelor degree in psychology with an emphasis in art therapy in 1999. In an academic writing class the assignment was to write a research paper on something that had an emotional charge for us; for me this was dollmaking. My completed paper was called The Dollmaking Circle: How Dollmaking Can Be Transformative and Healing. This research began my ongoing search for how dollmaking can be transformative and healing. I wrote a curriculum to be used during a weekend retreats and have been facilitating this creative healing process for ten years.

My dolls are emotional, expressing my feelings, beliefs and connection to my body, mind and spirit. I like working in three-dimension with the human face and form. Sometimes I begin with a feeling, a struggle, a wish to visualize some internal invisible energy so that I might speak to it and in doing so develop a relationship with this hidden aspect of myself. Other times I delight in the playing with materials, color, and shapes; seeing what comes forward from immersing myself in the creative process. I especially like to use roots, sticks and materials from nature because they invite me to move out of expected body forms. My goal always is to make a doll that is a complete, congruent in color and design, and is an expression of emotion.

I am inspired by information about body/mind healing, womens development, archetypes, depth psychology (Jung), personal empowerment, shamanism, the creative process and spirituality. I am also inspired by other dollmakers and being witness to my students’ creative process and dollmaking.