A Weekend With The Queen: elinor peace bailey

It was a beautiful Sunday in one of the most quaint main line towns outside of Wayne, Pennsylvania. Wayne is one of those places where you come to and want to stay forever!

I was one of six lucky doll makers to participate in an exciting workshop led by none other than the queen as I call her elinor peace bailey! The Wayne Art Center in Wayne, PA hosted Ms. peace bailey for a workshop in conjunction with their exhibit "Art Dolls: The Diversity of Figure & Form" .

I was truly amazed at elinor's wit as well as her knowledge of all diverse art doll forms including her background in African American folk doll art forms. She started out the workshop with a brief history of the traditional doll making form in the U.S. dating back to the early part of the last century. She spoke of the history of NIADA and other doll groups and movements.

Then we moved into a free flowing art class for those interested in learning more about the structure of a doll and those wishing to learn more about making doll faces (I was in this category). I learned so much about making 3 dimensional faces and drawing, embellishing and painting. It was more than worth the trip.

elinor is truly an amazing gal and I felt honored to be among 6 lucky aspiring and established doll makers to sit at her feet and learn the ways of quality doll making.

Special thanks to Susan Osborne for making this possible!

Three Divas Appear in my SDA Article

After being insired by Susan Osborne's article in Art Doll Quarterly this year, I took her mixed media dolls a little further and created the three divas! If you recall the divas were shown at the East of the River Show at the Honfluer Gallery in August of this year. I was invited by Soft Dolls & Animals Magazine to write an article so I wrote one about how I created these gorgeous girls on canvas. Check out page 17 of the January 2009 issue of Soft Dolls & Animals on the newsstand now! To see the Three Divas check out my July and August postings of this blog!

By the way- Susan Osborne sent me an e-mail stating that she was honored that I was inspired by her spring Art Doll Quarterly magazine article on Mixed Media dolls.