Black-Eyed Suzie Art Dolls and Oddities

My First Stop Motion Animation

Life has been a bit mad around here (do I start every post that way? I can't remember anymore...)  Last week, I had a 10-page final translation project due and M. and I were both sick.  I managed to finish, and I'm so deeply relieved to be done with my class.  Interesting as it was, it was so much work and it left me very little time for my much-loved activity of stuff-making, as every time M. took a nap, I was racing to finish translation assignments.  I'm thinking that I won't continue my Translation degree (Mr. L will, however - do we really both need the exact same degree?) so that I have more time for writing and doll-making. This weekend, we also had a little birthday party for M., which was so much fun and a little emotional for me as I can't quite believe my sweet little baby is already a year old.

I'm still chipping away at my most recent group of dolls, but during my crazy week, I came to terms with the fact I won't be able to finish them in time to mail them out before Christmas unless I pull a few all nighters, something neither my eyes nor my sanity can withstand these days.  I do apologize if anyone was planning to buy a doll as a gift, but I can't bring myself to spend so much time on the sculpting and eye-making just to rush through constructing the costumes and wigs.  And the dolls won't stand for it!

Even though they're coming along slowly, I'm really happy with the faces and the new eyes have turned out.  I'm officially in love with glass.          

Over the weekend, I put together a very brief stop motion animation with the ball-jointed doll I made last summer and a small, antique porcelain doll head given to me by my dear friend Sue.  It's my first try and quite primitive at that, but I thought I'd share it here. Even though I made lots of newbie mistakes, it was fun to play around with and exciting to find out I can do this with just my camera and my laptop.  I used iMovie and this very simple tutorial.

Jane Eyre

Life is very busy these days, as Mr. L and I have both started school again (our translation degrees).  I'm only taking one class, but must squeeze all the reading and writing into baby M's naps or after he's asleep for the night, and by that time, my brain is basically mush.  I have started my next batch of dolls, but they are moving slowly...will post some WIP photos as soon as I have something worth documenting. 

 
We did make time to watch a movie this past weekend: Cary Joji Fukunaga's adaptation of Jane Eyre, which I thoroughly enjoyed.  I've professed my love for for Gothic literature on this blog before, and Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights is one of my favourites, but somehow I've made this far without ever having read Charlotte's Jane Eyre. Anyway, now I feel I must because I loved the movie.  It had all the delicious elements of the Gothic I love - desolate English landscape, dark castle, brooding man, struggling-to-be-free woman - but without descending into caricature or ridiculing the genre, which is easy to do.  It's actually quite understated and beautiful and Micheal Fassbender (who plays Rochester) is a serious honey.  

 I even enjoyed Mia Wasikowska; she put me off in Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland (so disappointing!) and I didn't really get the big fuss about The Kids are Alright, but I thought she was very well-cast here.  So, another addition to my ever-lengthening list  of books I don't have time to read.  Oh, how it mocks me.  If you have such a list, you might consider this in the meantime...

Fancy Fillums

I've been meaning to share this little stop-motion animation I came across; it's the sweetest thing I've come across in a long time. 

Also, if you're interested in film, you should check out the National Film Board of Canada site. For the past few years, they've been uploading their collection to their website and you can now watch thousands of of their non-commercial films for free.  They're best-known for producing documentaries and animation, but they also have some short narrative films.  The NFB funds a lot of unusual, interesting fims that would never get studio money, so it's a great place to find somewhat weird stuff (one of my favourites, Mme. Tutli Puttli, for example).  You can browse their collection by genre, catgeory or keyword. 

Warning: Madame Tutli Putli is pretty creepy/ lecherous for an animated film...not really for kids! (Or squeamish adults.)

But Once a Year...

I know I'm getting older because I had such a delightful Hallowe'en and it did not involve a string of parties, drenching myself in fake blood, nor even a single fake wound; instead Mr. Lovely and I  gave out candy to the trick-or-treaters and then ordered a pizza, drank some wine and  watched Carrie. 

 

Mr. Lovely carved the pumpkin, and I was very gratified to hear several kids exclaim, "I got an eyeball!" (or the French equivalent: un oeil!) after we gave them their loot.   Oh, veiny delight!

 

Thin clouds passing over the nearly-full moon directly above us, big yellow leaves blowing by, packs of children in grotesque masks - a more perfect evening could not be contrived, really.  And all the little Victorian row houses on our street only added to the atmosphere of ghostliness and decay.

And if you were to walk out into the leaf-blown road and look up, way up (any Friendly Giant fans out there?) into our window, you might see just the slightest shimmer of a little black cat before he's gone!

And while I'm pretty sure there's almost no one left over the age of twenty who hasn't seen Carrie, I will urge you just in case. Or maybe you haven't seen it since it you were a teenager, or since it came out almost forty years ago.  It is so, so good; you just have to be willing to surrender yourself to some of the campier aspects.  And a film that can squish the themes of female sexuality, religious fanatacism, identity, social ostracism and occult powers into a movie about a senior prom?  How could that go wrong?  Piper Laurie is just about the coolest, creepiest woman ever (she also did a brilliant turn as Lady MacBeth in a super low-budget BBC production. You know the kind -  where a box is meant to represent a banquet table and the curtain is Dinsmore Castle?)  And no one other than Sissy Spacek could so beautifully portray an awkward teenage girl who is endearing, affectless and tormented then transform into a terrifying wreaker of adolescent vengeance the next.  (Some day I'll have to dig up my pictures of the year I dressed as Carrie...)   Anyway, Halloween may be over for another year, but Carrie will chill you to the bone anytime.

Currently Experiencing Technical Difficulties...

I apologize, faithful readers, for such a long absence.  I spent six days in Toronto last week for Canadian Thanksgiving, and am now having very painful computer drama.  Well, it's not all that dramatic really; for many months I had the use of a lovely, shiny practically brand-new Mac powerbook (o glorious object!) thanks to the huge generosity of a friend of mine. But now I'm back to my own ancient and hair-tearingly slow beast of a computer, which makes even the simplest of tasks take forever.  I feel as though I've been flung back into the dinosaur age, or at least the days of dial-up, which were dark days indeed. (And this is where my fascination with the past reveals my utter hypocrisy because I do like certain things - computer things -  to be shiny and new and fast, fast, fast!) 

But I must take a deep breath, accept that until we get a new computer, such things will take six times as long, and soldier on...On the luddite front, I had another assembly-line evening the other night where I hand-tore dozens of the little thank you cards I include with orders and then stamped them all with my sweet little black-eyed susan stamp. 

 

They are very simple, but quite pretty, especially all in a row.

 

I'm also working away on new dolls for my next shop update, which will take place sometime in early November.

This weekend, we saw the new Jane Campion film, Bright Star, about the relationship between Keats and his fiancée Fanny Brawn; so, so lovely.  I confess I have a weakness for period film and will watch pretty much anything with big, rustling dresses (though, being set in the early 19th century, Bright Star's dresses are not so very big).  But this is a truly beautiful film, pretty clothes aside; the story is heart-breaking and romantic while still being restrained, and the actors are all excellent (though I did have try to push images of Abbie Cornish snuggled up next to Ryan 'dead-eyes' Phillipe out of mind).  And it is really worth seeing in the theatre because there are some stunning shots of the English countryside and the heaths.  Oh, le sigh!  I snivelled away in the theatre, but managed  - just barely - not to break into the big, slobby dry-heaves. You can watch the trailer here, and if you go, take your tissues...

A Newsletter and a Little Piece of my Heart

I've been toying with the idea of publishing a monthly newsletter for some time now, but I didn't want to send a boring one filled with nothing but text, yet I know virtually nothing about HTML and know myself well enough to know I'm not going to learn anytime soon. After considerable web-combing, I finally found a place that offers templates that don't make me gag, so I've been playing around and have come up with something I'm quite happy with so far:

It's not quite ready to go, but should be by the end of this week.  I realize reading both someone's blog and their newsletter might seem a little redundant, but I'm offering for some people who might not have time to keep up with a blog, or who just prefer the immediacy and efficiency of a newsletter.  There's a little buttony signy-uppy thingy in the right-hand column.  And, of course, I promise never to spam or share your email address...I am a hater of spam!

So, do I have any news worth a whole letter?  I do!  I can't go into details just yet, but it involves plenty of dolls, and here is a little preview of some things I've been working on:
I used those soft focus, fuzzy edges to mask what is in fact a very messy studio.  And here is little Simon, who get his own picture because he just looked so sad, I had to try to cheer him up...

In my last post I added some photographs of my grandmother and her mother in Brazil, where she and my mother were born.  Those photos are so dear to me, because they are a record of my family but also because they are so beautiful in and of themselves, and  - as  someone who tends to romanticize the past - they evoke a time and feeling that I can never really know.  Looking at them again made me think of a  movie I love, Black Orpehus.  It was made in Rio in 1959, is set during Carnaval, and is based on the myth of Orpheus.  It is funny and beautiful and dark in places - basically my three criteria for good art.  The very last scene is so sweet and charming, and I yet I always cry when I watch it...isn't it strange how you can be nostalgic for a place you've never been, for a time in which you've never lived?

And if that doesn't make you want see it, here is the trailer...love, beauty, magic, music, evil (but vanquished!)....sigh.