Happy Anniversary, Tim and Jean

Last Sunday my brother celebrated his 40th wedding anniversary. Despite all the jokes about what a saint he married, we are all proud of their success. That includes two children grown and married who are throwing a bash tomorrow afternoon to honor their parents. It figures that they have requested canned goods for their church pantry in lieu of gifts.

I still want to do something a little extra to celebrate this landmark in time. I think embarrassing my brother on the international Internet should do the trick. I recently ran across this photo of him taken by our late father one night while Mom and I were gone to a movie. Dad was an amateur photographer and did all his own dark room work. So here's the baby brother who actually grew up into a responsible citizen. Go figure.

TADOA Gallery Show Opens

Sheesh! It's taken me a full week to announce the opening of our show at an honest-to-grandma art gallery... 43 art dolls by 17 artist members of TAODA - Texas Assoc. of Original Doll Artists. The gallery is in Somerville, about 60 miles NW of downtown Houston, near a popular lake in the touristy hill country. Ought to be lots of summer vacation traffic through there.

Since most art galleries are long on wall space and short on pedestals, we required at least two of the three entries allowed each artist to be wall-mounted dolls. We called the challenge "Out of the Box" but the gallery calls the show "Go Figure."

Nobody should be surprised at the variety of solutions to that challenge in the show, considering the range of styles of dollmakers in the group. The show as a whole is a seminar on what constitutes an art doll. Somebody asked me who juried the show. I was proud to say nobody did. Every doll entered was there, and every one of them deserved to be.

My pal Joyce Patterson took these photos of me with my dolls. They put Nimue in the window so you can see her from behind as well and her translucence really shows up. Don't worry, no direct sunlight, there's a deep awning over the sidewalk. Who'da thought deep red walls would actually enhance art rather than distract from it? Then add a black and white tiled floor set on the diagonal! The room is gorgeous empty!

We were thrilled that 8 members of Central Texas Art Doll Sculptors (CTADS) drove down from Austin to attend our opening. I expect we will have to go back to Somerville in a few months for the opening of a show of theirs. That's two Texas galleries we've sold on art dolls. Onward and upward!

Robert Genn's Twice Weekly Letter

The "letter" in the title is a sort of blog written by successful Canadian artist Robert Genn. I call it a sort of blog but you don't have to go to a blog site to read it, it comes to you twice a week as email. He has a team of helpers who collect quotes and pithy stuff and do the tech for him. But still, I don't know how the man gets all the painting and traveling done that he does and gets this letter thingie out twice a week as well!

While it is directed mainly to painters, there's always plenty there for artists of any stripe...and even non-artists. Like in the latest edition, there's a quote from Margaret Wente that needs to be posted at every school in the nation!

"People thought that kids who felt good about themselves would get higher grades. They don't. They only feel entitled to get them." Read that last sentence again!

Genn adds another quote: "Self-esteem," says cognitive psychologist Martin Seligman, "cannot be directly injected. It needs to result from doing well, from being warranted."

WOW!!!

If you're interested in getting on Robert Genn's mailing list - FREE - go to the site www.painterskeys.com/ - you can read his letters and responses by members. It's cool.

Just got back from the birthday party. PrisCilla made a hit with the nephew! Before he got her out of the gift bag, he grinned and asked me if this was the mother. I told him no, it was a little sister...it is much smaller than Ctrl Alt Delete! He pulled her out and started studying her to identify the parts I had used. Said he had just the spot to hang her in his office. Bet she gets there tomorrow. Score one for our side!

Now I gotta get another article up for associatedcontent.com. They published my Ten Tips for Arthritic Fingers this week.

PrisCilla

My nephew supplied a dead PC case and parts for Ctrl Alt Delete, so I've whipped up a little sister for CAD to give to nephew for his birthday. Sshhh. Don't tell him, the party is tomorrow.

PrisCilla is 18" tall plus hair. She can hang on the wall or pose on his computer. She could also be rigged to become a marionette.

Okay, so her arms aren't the same length. She's a PC.

Here's my other wall doll for "Out of the Box" - This fellow is Thinkin' Outside the Box. I used to have him lounging in a shoebox lid. Now he hangs on the wall against a disk covered with working drawings. Yes, his body is a box. I love his feet.

My doll club has been trying to break into the art gallery world. We do one of a kind art dolls, which we really should call mixed media sculpture. One gallery loved our portfolio, but turned us down because they do wall-hung art and have no pedestals.

So we put together a portfolio of wall-hung dolls! We call the collection "Out of the Box." One of my entries is "Ctrl Alt Delete" for whom I've been collecting parts for some time. He is rigged to be converted into a marionette. Like so many of my dolls, he's hard to photograph. The large pin connector below his eyes is supposed to be his nose. His mouth is the wide green thing below that. His ears are little speakers, one round, one rectangular. His feet are mice. I need to get some closeups.

When I can find some black braided fishing line, I'm going to spring him from the case and rig him up as a marionette.