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The Doll: an artfully artificial representation of a
human being
Bay View Book Arts Gallery
2693 S. Kinnickinnic
414-758-8699
Now – July 29
Gallery Night Reception: Friday, July 27, 1-9pm
"You’ve Come A Long Way Baby (Doll)"
By Judith Ann Moriarty
Doll: French, “poupe” probably originates from latin
words “puppa” or “pupa”, which roughly translates
to “nipples or breast.” At puberty, young girls (in
the age of Antiquity) gave their dolls to the
goddess Artemisia. It was a way of renouncing
childhood games.
Bay View Book Arts Gallery, 2693 S. Kinnickinnic (a
few doors north of Sven’s coffee spot) is small and
the hours it is open are slender: Thursday –
Sunday, from 1-5pm & by appointment.
The Doll: an artfully artificial representation of a
human being, is a mouthful, but perhaps it serves
as spin for their “Artfully Artificial Art Workshops.”
You can sign up to explore the possibilities of doll-
making classes if you call the gallery. Hopefully, the
sessions will encourage participants to avoid
producing dolls like those hawked on QVC
by song bird, Marie Osmond. Pouty and perfect,
they are pretty…awful. Porcelain specimens frozen
in time, I can’t imagine having them in my house.
The Bay View exhibit intrigued me for purely selfish
reasons, i.e., I grew up playing with “movie star”
paper dolls (Hedy Lamar; Dorothy Lamour), and for
many years have used them as motifs in my
fairytales and art making. Also, as a young
Brookfield mother of two girls, I spent quite a few
hours searching for Barbie Doll (born in 1959) hi-
heels, lost in my white shag carpeting. In addition
to Barbie, my girls had dolls tagged Raggedy Ann
(b. 1915), Cabbage Patch Kids (invented in 1976 by
an art student experimenting with sewn and
stuffed fabrics), Baby Wets (and wets and wets)
and Chatty Cathy, a blabber mouth with yellow hair
and a fussy pinafore, who shared Barbie’s 1959
birth date. Barbie and Chatty were exact
opposites. Frankly, I hated Chatty and often
considered cutting out her voice box.
My days of playing with dolls and/or picking up
after those who did, are long gone, so I figured it
was wise to go online and get some background
about dolls. On the web, I learned that the
difference between a doll and a “doll as art,” boils
down to a matter of “soul,” artfully imbued by the
creativity of the maker. It seems that a regular doll
(one used for play), is an object deserving to be
dominated, as in “spanked or thrown in a corner.”
The “art doll,” the web site claims, is our equal and
not a play thing. It’s unclear where dolls
resembling Paris Hilton, The Olsen Twins, Angelina
Jolie, and Anna Nicole Smith fit in, but I’m loathe to
think they are my equal. The current onslaught of
celebrity dolls is enough to put extra curls on
Shirley Temple’s head, speaking of which, I never
did have a Shirley Temple doll. Instead I settled for
a lesser model gowned in blue satin and a bridal
veil, circa 1944. Now and then I wonder what
happened to her. Maybe she married and divorced.
Before I launch into describing the Bay View Book
Arts exhibit, you may be interested in Paul Klee:
Hand Puppets, recently published by Hatje Cantz
and distributed by D.A.P. It details fifty puppets
made by the renowned Swiss artist for his son
Felix. It’s interesting that Klee did not consider the
puppets as works of art, but they certainly have
soul and mirror his playful paintings. One of his
1922 puppets is fashioned from beef bones,
plaster and pieces of an old suit jacket.
On the subject of “bones,” Muskego artist, Carolyn
M. Brady, uses chicken bones and wire to construct
her aptly named and charming She’s Just Big-Boned,
a small doll that reveals more than it conceals. Jim
Mauer, the lone male exhibitor in a field of
approximately one dozen artists (half attended art
school, half are self-taught) contributed two works
that are exact opposites: an antique spoon with a
collaged image of a woman, and (eeek!), a large
female doll (Bat Eater), with a spider on her leg.
Suspended from the ceiling as if floating in space,
the kicker is, she’s eating a bat! Little Miss Muffet
sat on a tuffet….
Eat your heart out, Marie Osmond.
Jessica Poor, the gallery’s artist-in-residence (she
will be conducting the workshops), has an MFA in
Print-making from UWM, so you might think she’d
be rather conservative. Poor has numerous pieces
in the show, none of which are conservative, for
example, Twins, wherein a macabre pair of dolls’
heads rests atop a small painted box. One smiles.
One grimaces. Poor explained that until she was
age 5, she thought she was a twin, then goes on
to explain that her Bay View residence was once a
funeral home, which may itself explain her photo of
a doll dug up in her backyard. Poor photographed
its face (the eyes are ringed in gruesome black),
and the result is a cross between the art of Joel
Peter Witkin and Johnny Depp in “Edward
Scissorhands.” Imagine 50 small heads of dolls
encased in round tins and mounted on the south
wall. Poor exhibits those, and more. Petra Press
(yes, that’s her name), fashioned an intriguing doll
with a head from an old Charlie McCarthy doll, and
her assemblage “Cinderella Barbie” is over-the-top.
Ken takes a backseat in this piece. You’ll need lots
of time to explore everything in the outstanding
event, including opening the drawers of numerous
cases holding chapbooks, zines, and other
handmade art books. You may not need to use the
john, but use it anyway. It’s a gallery unto itself.
The venue doubles as a workspace for the
artist/owner, Robin Kinney (a graphic designer by
trade), who has been running Bay View Book Arts
for three years. What she and her assistants have
wrought is amazing. During my visit, I was told that
most artists who are involved in making art-books,
also either collect or make dolls.
In closing, let it be said that Miss Kasumi Tsukuba,
a “friendship doll,” owned by the Milwaukee Public
Museum, was recently sent to Japan for re-
furbishing. She will be returning to Milwaukee at
the end of August. Some dolls have all the luck.
Judith Ann Moriarty is a Milwaukee-based author and
frequent contributor to Susceptible to Images.
Comments?
Email comments@susceptibletoimages.com
Copyright 2007. Content may not be used or
reproduced without the permission of the author.
human being
Bay View Book Arts Gallery
2693 S. Kinnickinnic
414-758-8699
Now – July 29
Gallery Night Reception: Friday, July 27, 1-9pm
"You’ve Come A Long Way Baby (Doll)"
By Judith Ann Moriarty
Doll: French, “poupe” probably originates from latin
words “puppa” or “pupa”, which roughly translates
to “nipples or breast.” At puberty, young girls (in
the age of Antiquity) gave their dolls to the
goddess Artemisia. It was a way of renouncing
childhood games.
Bay View Book Arts Gallery, 2693 S. Kinnickinnic (a
few doors north of Sven’s coffee spot) is small and
the hours it is open are slender: Thursday –
Sunday, from 1-5pm & by appointment.
The Doll: an artfully artificial representation of a
human being, is a mouthful, but perhaps it serves
as spin for their “Artfully Artificial Art Workshops.”
You can sign up to explore the possibilities of doll-
making classes if you call the gallery. Hopefully, the
sessions will encourage participants to avoid
producing dolls like those hawked on QVC
by song bird, Marie Osmond. Pouty and perfect,
they are pretty…awful. Porcelain specimens frozen
in time, I can’t imagine having them in my house.
The Bay View exhibit intrigued me for purely selfish
reasons, i.e., I grew up playing with “movie star”
paper dolls (Hedy Lamar; Dorothy Lamour), and for
many years have used them as motifs in my
fairytales and art making. Also, as a young
Brookfield mother of two girls, I spent quite a few
hours searching for Barbie Doll (born in 1959) hi-
heels, lost in my white shag carpeting. In addition
to Barbie, my girls had dolls tagged Raggedy Ann
(b. 1915), Cabbage Patch Kids (invented in 1976 by
an art student experimenting with sewn and
stuffed fabrics), Baby Wets (and wets and wets)
and Chatty Cathy, a blabber mouth with yellow hair
and a fussy pinafore, who shared Barbie’s 1959
birth date. Barbie and Chatty were exact
opposites. Frankly, I hated Chatty and often
considered cutting out her voice box.
My days of playing with dolls and/or picking up
after those who did, are long gone, so I figured it
was wise to go online and get some background
about dolls. On the web, I learned that the
difference between a doll and a “doll as art,” boils
down to a matter of “soul,” artfully imbued by the
creativity of the maker. It seems that a regular doll
(one used for play), is an object deserving to be
dominated, as in “spanked or thrown in a corner.”
The “art doll,” the web site claims, is our equal and
not a play thing. It’s unclear where dolls
resembling Paris Hilton, The Olsen Twins, Angelina
Jolie, and Anna Nicole Smith fit in, but I’m loathe to
think they are my equal. The current onslaught of
celebrity dolls is enough to put extra curls on
Shirley Temple’s head, speaking of which, I never
did have a Shirley Temple doll. Instead I settled for
a lesser model gowned in blue satin and a bridal
veil, circa 1944. Now and then I wonder what
happened to her. Maybe she married and divorced.
Before I launch into describing the Bay View Book
Arts exhibit, you may be interested in Paul Klee:
Hand Puppets, recently published by Hatje Cantz
and distributed by D.A.P. It details fifty puppets
made by the renowned Swiss artist for his son
Felix. It’s interesting that Klee did not consider the
puppets as works of art, but they certainly have
soul and mirror his playful paintings. One of his
1922 puppets is fashioned from beef bones,
plaster and pieces of an old suit jacket.
On the subject of “bones,” Muskego artist, Carolyn
M. Brady, uses chicken bones and wire to construct
her aptly named and charming She’s Just Big-Boned,
a small doll that reveals more than it conceals. Jim
Mauer, the lone male exhibitor in a field of
approximately one dozen artists (half attended art
school, half are self-taught) contributed two works
that are exact opposites: an antique spoon with a
collaged image of a woman, and (eeek!), a large
female doll (Bat Eater), with a spider on her leg.
Suspended from the ceiling as if floating in space,
the kicker is, she’s eating a bat! Little Miss Muffet
sat on a tuffet….
Eat your heart out, Marie Osmond.
Jessica Poor, the gallery’s artist-in-residence (she
will be conducting the workshops), has an MFA in
Print-making from UWM, so you might think she’d
be rather conservative. Poor has numerous pieces
in the show, none of which are conservative, for
example, Twins, wherein a macabre pair of dolls’
heads rests atop a small painted box. One smiles.
One grimaces. Poor explained that until she was
age 5, she thought she was a twin, then goes on
to explain that her Bay View residence was once a
funeral home, which may itself explain her photo of
a doll dug up in her backyard. Poor photographed
its face (the eyes are ringed in gruesome black),
and the result is a cross between the art of Joel
Peter Witkin and Johnny Depp in “Edward
Scissorhands.” Imagine 50 small heads of dolls
encased in round tins and mounted on the south
wall. Poor exhibits those, and more. Petra Press
(yes, that’s her name), fashioned an intriguing doll
with a head from an old Charlie McCarthy doll, and
her assemblage “Cinderella Barbie” is over-the-top.
Ken takes a backseat in this piece. You’ll need lots
of time to explore everything in the outstanding
event, including opening the drawers of numerous
cases holding chapbooks, zines, and other
handmade art books. You may not need to use the
john, but use it anyway. It’s a gallery unto itself.
The venue doubles as a workspace for the
artist/owner, Robin Kinney (a graphic designer by
trade), who has been running Bay View Book Arts
for three years. What she and her assistants have
wrought is amazing. During my visit, I was told that
most artists who are involved in making art-books,
also either collect or make dolls.
In closing, let it be said that Miss Kasumi Tsukuba,
a “friendship doll,” owned by the Milwaukee Public
Museum, was recently sent to Japan for re-
furbishing. She will be returning to Milwaukee at
the end of August. Some dolls have all the luck.
Judith Ann Moriarty is a Milwaukee-based author and
frequent contributor to Susceptible to Images.
Comments?
Email comments@susceptibletoimages.com
Copyright 2007. Content may not be used or
reproduced without the permission of the author.
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| Chatty Cathy doll. (Click pictures to enlarge; use your browser's back button to return to article.) |
| Carolyn M. Brady, She's Just Big-Boned. |
| Jim Mauer, Bat Eater |
| Jessica Poor, Twins (open) |
| Jessica Poor, Growing Collection. |
| Petra Press, Protect Me From Maniacs III. |