I was so happy to be included in this show of amazing artisans at FIT’s Art and Design Gallery. Thank you to Nomi Kleinman for the invitation, and to Sally Ann Parsons, FIT, Sandra Woodall and The Cincinnati Ballet for lending us the costume. It was a wonderful journey.
Sandra Woodall’s wonderful design
Sally Ann Parsons and I set up the Knight on a mannequin in preparation for the exhibit.
Our Knight! In place at the exhibit!
Accompanying samples, photos and text about the collaborative process of making a painted costume.
Our Knight in good company…
Thank you to Sally Ann Parsons, Sandra Woodall and The Cincinnati Ballet for letting us borrow the costume!
Maybe more than falling in love with art was becoming enamored with Making Things. When I was ten years old, I discovered a book in our local (Huber Heights, OH–our little town, New Carlisle, didn’t have a library) library called There’s a Decorator in Your Doll House by Melanie Kahane (Galahad Books,1968). I checked it out every two weeks for years. A few times a year, the librarian would make me leave it in the library for a whole week in case anyone else might want to check it out—an eternity. But in its pages, I learned to capably make dollhouse furniture out of cardboard, wooden spools, cupcake cups and pipe cleaners. I cobbled together mismatched earrings to make a chandelier, I used a perfume bottle lid to make a pretty vase. Repurposing found objects as things for my dollhouse made me look at my world differently: Everything around me became a potential art supply. Every spare minute was devoted to making things, and in the time I wasn’t doing that, I was daydreaming about what I might make next when I was back in my “studio” (the basement). I still do this today, but its art I make now, and not dollhouse furniture, and not in my mom’s basement!
