THE MAKING OF NAIMA AND CELESTE
I have spent a lifetime obsessed with breaking open tiny mechanisms to see what makes their cogs turn. My obsession with craft began with my grandfather- a tradesman and artist in his own right, who I learned most about in notebook pages of chicken scratch left behind after he passed. In that way, my obsession with materiality is a product of familial nostalgia- reflecting fleeting moments and artefacts into stories and characters.
Resultantly, my practice is extremely narrative driven, and considers found material, intuitive method and its context as tools for the production of meaning as it relates to tangibility and ephemerality. I use found material in my work, sourcing passed down and second hand fabrics to culturally root my creations and pay homage to the people and places I come from. Ultimately, I make dolls as maps- as geographical markers of my place and time in history, and as bodies for my thoughts, reflections, and thumbprints against the greater narrative.
In consideration of the central themes of my practice, I fabricated a set of characters from my story entitled Notturno, which combines my love for classical music and the beveled plastic edge of electronic children's toys. Notturno tells the story of Naima and Celeste, a pair of student musicians, who explore a conservatory bewitched by a Nocturne.
NAIMA
Beginning first with Naima’s 2D turnaround, simplified down from a more detailed costume sheet:
CELESTE
Likewise, Celeste's 2D turnaround, simplified down from a more detailed costume sheet:
I firstly focused on identifying key characteristics of Naima’s design such as color, shape, and symbols to make her design more toyetic. Her character is inspired by Charmaine Wilkerson’s Black Cake and princesses of the Russian Ballet- so I made her look playfully regal, as a prototypical sleeping beauty. The initial costuming process gave me the opportunity to iron out her fabrication and textile constraints, so this finalized sketch was isolated to ironing out her new shape language.
I started by building her armature from aluminum wire and foil. I knew I wanted her to appear lanky, so I shortened her chest and extended the size of her lower leg to lean into that knock-kneed, pubescent stature.
The initial sculpting pass on the head and pelvis using Apoxie sculpt. I initially wanted to make her head bobble and left spacing between the base of her skull and her neck, but with the weight constraints of her head, hair, and crown, I ended up affixing her head to her neck with extra wire.
Further progress on the body. I chose to build out her appendages with Polyfil to give her some mobility and softness.
Second pass on the face to add a nose, redefine the eyelids, and add eyelashes.
The sculpt started to come alive with the first pass of color. I used acrylic paint, watercolor, pan pastel, and soft colored pencils to give her features a grainy, handcrafted texture.
The tail end of the hair process. I began by mapping out a pattern to path out each yarn strand and built out the bulk of her twists using aluminum foil, then secured the pieces with all-purpose adhesive and thread.
I experimented a bit when it came to toning the body. As Polyfil is notoriously difficult to dye, my initial idea was to sew ‘socks’ out of her appropriate skin fabric to slide up her legs and arms. This proved difficult given the proportion of her feet to the skinner region of her thighs and the splay of her hands, so I ultimately decided to needle felt wool over her extremities and further color corrected and defined planes with pan pastels.
Beginning fabrication of her clothes, chiefly with her socks, shoes, and dress frills. I cut my sock pattern out of canvas, hand painted my dots, and hand stitched a delicate trim along the cuff.
For the frills of her dress, I hand basted my gathers to avoid damaging the silk with my sewing machine.
I made her crown from aluminum wire, miniature bells, and yarn.
Her finished dress! All hand sewn.
Snippets of the quilting process! I sourced some lovely batik quilting blocks from a local shop in downtown Phoenix. I really wanted this quilt to look handmade and well loved, so I chose to make the binding stitch exposed.
Final!
